OccupySF IT Admins Using Pedal Power For Protest

These people need to find jobs. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 12:23 · Score: -1, Troll

Seriously. What happened to the American work ethic? What happened to lifting yourself up by your own bootstraps, rather than whining about others that have done well? Why do they think they're entitled to what we have worked so hard for? The youth of today are a bunch of whiny crybabies. They need to be disciplined. I say bring in the Guard, either let them leave peacefully, or bruised and battered. Give them something to *really* complain about, if they think they have it so bad right now!

Re:These people need to find jobs. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 12:25 · Score: -1

Obvious troll is obvious.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 12:27 · Score: 0

It's best to just ignore them. You don't want to turn them into martyr's by beating them.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by Mr.+Underbridge · 2011-10-14 12:29 · Score: 1

The youth of today are a bunch of whiny crybabies.
As opposed to their whiny hippie (grand)parents from 40-50 years ago?
Re:These people need to find jobs. by planimal · 2011-10-14 12:31 · Score: 1

i'm a firm believer that successful people are born from parents who beat and deprived their children, specifically the father.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by jargon82 · 2011-10-14 12:32 · 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.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by wierd_w · 2011-10-14 12:39 · 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. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 13:05 · 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. by Lumpy · 2011-10-14 13:24 · Score: 0, Troll

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.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by Ethanol-fueled · 2011-10-14 13:26 · Score: -1, Insightful

Yes, they are altruistic morons.

March on the Capitol. March on Wall Street, you look like greedy morons who don't care about anything other than your own trust funds. March on the capitol, we have real problems to solve. Grow a fucking pair and encroach on the Capitol. I'll join you if you grow your own pair. Sissies.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2011-10-14 13:34 · Score: 2, Insightful

Said ancestors also had reactionaries telling them to shut up and like the status quo....
Re:These people need to find jobs. by wierd_w · 2011-10-14 13:40 · 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. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 13:59 · Score: -1

rather than whining about others that have done well?
The "done well" game is rigged, that's why.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by Huge_UID · 2011-10-14 14:07 · Score: 1

Where is the "+1 Douchebag" moderation?
Re:These people need to find jobs. by migla · 2011-10-14 14:10 · Score: 2

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.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 14:14 · Score: -1

Sorry, but the situation hasn't changed. If you're a hard worker, you will do just fine. I'm 22 and graduated in December of last year. I worked full time while going to a cheap in-state school and graduated debt free. I have job offers coming out the wazoo, but I decided to stick with the company I was working with while in college.
I don't mean to sound bitter, and I certainly sympathize with the idea that it was unfair for banks to be bailed out (the oft quoted "privatizing profits and socializing losses" complaint) - but with that said, I can't sympathize with the position that many of these protesters take.
It was their choice to attend university - and more than likely, it was there choice to get a crummy degree. There are numerous in-demand fields where it is extremely easy to get a job (science/engineering courses in particular; anyone with a degree even somewhat related to petrochemical engineering will graduate and make six figures starting for example). I was warned by universities, student loan providers, and just about everyone else in the world about taking on too much debt - especially for a non-lucrative degree. If that advice is ignored, then there isn't much place for bitching for (or five) years later when they graduate with too much debt - that was their call.
Most of the people - probably around 2/3rds - that I know that graduated college are happily employed and have no problems even in this relatively poor economy. The other 1/3rd are, quite frankly (this is a generalization, there are always exceptions), LAZY. They decided to pursue a worthless degree, slacked in college, earned mediocre GPA's, and can't be that arsed to actually go out and get a job. And if they do work, they don't take it seriously. Even then, they still manage to do alright - they all seem to have iPhone's and fancy clothes and shoes (I own a four year old phone and my most expensive dress shirt probably runs at around $25).
I have no problem with the (few) valid points the protesters are making - but for the majority of the complaints, they are baseless and a result of poor personal choices. Just like the government shouldn't be in the business of bailing out business for poor decisions, it also should not be in the business of bailing out the poor decisions of people (in the majority of cases).
Re:These people need to find jobs. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 14:23 · Score: -1

Also (and I hate to respond to my own post) - greed is not evil. The primary driver of economic growth is greed. Greed for profits is what increases efficiency and, subsequently, the standard of living for all. Similarly, I was "greedy" when I went to a cheap college - I wanted to save my money to purchase other goods and services because they were best in best interest. In other words, I was working in my self interest. Maybe if those who feel it necessary to go to a private school and earn a social services degree should be a bit more greedy themselves and they wouldn't be in the situation they are in.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by wierd_w · 2011-10-14 14:30 · Score: 1

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.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2011-10-14 14:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 14:41 · Score: 0

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.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by MightyMartian · 2011-10-14 14:51 · Score: 1

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.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by PopeRatzo · 2011-10-14 15:01 · Score: 2

Seriously. What happened to the American work ethic?
It's been downsized by corporate America, along with all the other types of ethics.

--
You are welcome on my lawn.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 15:01 · Score: -1

Greed is an expression of self interest - and self interest is what drives society. Some people express self interest through the classical "greed" stereotype; others perform altruistic acts because it makes them feel good - i.e., it is in their self interest. Similarly, I wouldn't go around killing people that I don't like - even if I could get away with it - because I would feel bad about it. Again, I am operating in my own self interest. So, yes, you can build a society that is purely based on self-interest - which is, at it's core, the exact same thing as greed.
(interesting side note: the captcha for this post was "murder"; is Slashdot forming AI?)
Re:These people need to find jobs. by MightyMartian · 2011-10-14 15:10 · Score: 1

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.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by MightyMartian · 2011-10-14 15:12 · Score: 1

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.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by Qzukk · 2011-10-14 15:19 · Score: 1

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.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by wierd_w · 2011-10-14 15:20 · Score: 2

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.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 15:53 · Score: 1

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?
Re:These people need to find jobs. by Vancorps · 2011-10-14 17:24 · Score: 1

ummm.... they are marching on Washington
Re:These people need to find jobs. by maxwell+demon · 2011-10-14 20:46 · Score: 2

The youth of today are a bunch of whiny crybabies.
Only whiners whine about whiners.
Think about it.

--
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by maxwell+demon · 2011-10-14 21:24 · Score: 1

March on the Capitol.
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.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by TheRaven64 · 2011-10-14 21:34 · Score: 2

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
Re:These people need to find jobs. by TheRaven64 · 2011-10-14 21:43 · Score: 1

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
Re:These people need to find jobs. by maxwell+demon · 2011-10-14 21:43 · Score: 1

Greed is an expression of self interest - and self interest is what drives society.
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.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by MightyMartian · 2011-10-15 06:20 · Score: 2

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.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by shutdown+-p+now · 2011-10-15 10:33 · Score: 1

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.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-18 03:21 · Score: 0

I'm not so diluted to think
More schooling for this boy! Unless you really meant watered-down.
Re:These people need to find jobs. by sznupi · 2011-10-29 19:42 · Score: 1

...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)

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 ...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:
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

so do what load up on student loans and learn skil by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 12:25 · Score: 0

so do what load up on student loans and learn skill that do not help on the job?

Next up, by smileygladhands · 2011-10-14 12:31 · Score: 1

Flower power.

Uh... by f3rret · 2011-10-14 12:33 · Score: 1

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.

Re:Uh... by Brett+Buck · 2011-10-14 12:48 · Score: 0, Flamebait

It's driving force is a desire for equality, where equality means that you get free money from the government.
Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 12:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

Relevant:
http://i.imgur.com/FIZuV.png
Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 12:50 · Score: 0

No, you get the same amount of free money as big business, and you pay the same taxes as million/billionaires.
Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 12:52 · Score: 0

If they banks get it, why should we not?
Re:Uh... by Colonel+Korn · 2011-10-14 12:52 · Score: 2

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 promising change in Washington]."

--
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 12:56 · Score: 0

Based on your response and taking into account your signature I would ascribe your statements to ignorance.
Re:Uh... by wierd_w · 2011-10-14 12:56 · Score: 3, 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... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 12:57 · 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.
Re:Uh... by Brett+Buck · 2011-10-14 12:59 · Score: 3

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.
Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 13:00 · Score: -1

Well, as long as you pay it back as quickly as the banks did, no problem (actually, if you owe the IRS money on April 15, in some sense you have received a bailout because you didn't pay on time -- if course, if you get a refund, you're probably an idiot).
Re:Uh... by Black+Parrot · 2011-10-14 13:04 · Score: 3, 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.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:Uh... by Black+Parrot · 2011-10-14 13:05 · Score: 3, 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.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:Uh... by arthurh3535 · 2011-10-14 13:32 · Score: 2

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.

--
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 13:43 · Score: 0

If people got paid by the quality of the work they have performed rather than by what they do as an occupation, it's likely we wouldn't have this problem with the current economy and those out and protesting would be much more content with how things are going.
Now some will say so and so has a more important impact on things...
Well perhaps they do. But it's still wrong that somebody who acts like an asshole and has a shitty fuck-all work ethic and ruins a company from the CEO seat still manages to land a few million dollars for all the damage they caused. Meanwhile some polite and courteous guy that toils away for some park district getting a dozen parks clean of all garbage and having the landscape tended to near perfection such that the public can enjoy it without worry gets paid near minimum wage. I'm sure both may have an impact on the well being of a comparable number of people within a similar time frame.
I wish people claiming that certain jobs are more important than others would man-up and treat them as such. Society would be better off if such attitude could be adopted. Unfortunately it's not happening, and the trend often seems to be for the worse.
Re:Uh... by demachina · 2011-10-14 13:45 · 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.

--
@de_machina
Re:Uh... by NonSequor · 2011-10-14 13:53 · Score: 2

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 institution you want to hear the voice of the American people on) and those institutions which fail to meet a certain vote threshold will have their headquarters bulldozed. Following this, a Constitutional Convention will be held, without any delegates from the failed institutions, to attempt to establish what we're going to do to move forward. Their goal is to establish new compromises and to make a new direction that hopefully will hopefully put us back on the right track. If their new proposal is not ratified, they will be subject to charges of treason, which is the fate the founding father's would have met if they had proposed a new government which was not ratified.

--
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
Re:Uh... by Flipao · 2011-10-14 13:53 · 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.
Re:Uh... by Brett+Buck · 2011-10-14 13:57 · Score: 2

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.
Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 14:05 · Score: -1, Flamebait

The top 10% of income earners pay 70% of the taxes. They don't make 70% of the income... about 45%. The US has the highest corporate tax of any industrialized country, with is a double tax: profits taxed once as a corporation and again on personal taxes as the profit is paid out to the people who ARE the corporation.
Nearly half of America pays NOTHNG in Federal Income tax. Many many many get more back than what they paid in. We used to call it Welfare when people got money from the government that they didn't pay in. Now it's Earned Income Tax Credit. Cute...
It's Mobocracy at it's best. Lets all vote to have 5% of the people pay 100% of the taxes.... People vote in their own self interest and it passes with a majority. Simple... and it's how Democracy commits suicide.
I thought 'bullying' was the worst thing ever these days. 99% of the people ganging up on 1% ... Humm....
Re:Uh... by jamesh · 2011-10-14 14:12 · Score: 1

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.
Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 14:30 · Score: 1

You must be spending all that money wrong. Places that I thought had high taxes, like Sweden, are better for people if you look at general not being shot or homeless or poor or sick or dead metrics.
And I thought Sweden was comparatively socialist. If you pay/mooch as much or more than we do, then what the fuck is wrong with you 'murricans?
Re:Uh... by dvdwholesale3 · 2011-10-14 14:47 · Score: -1

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Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 15:24 · Score: 1

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/two-thirds-wall-street-donations-now-go-republicans-democrats-get-least-contributions-may-20
Re:Uh... by visualight · 2011-10-14 15:26 · Score: 2

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.

--
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 15:35 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Everything you said is a lie.
Re:Uh... by artor3 · 2011-10-14 15:38 · 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....
Re:Uh... by murdocj · 2011-10-14 15:40 · Score: 1

Well, as long as they have a clear cut action program, what could go wrong?
Re:Uh... by colinrichardday · 2011-10-14 15:49 · Score: 1

Would you consider the lack of a hierarchical structure to be helpful for the open-source movement?
Re:Uh... by colinrichardday · 2011-10-14 15:51 · Score: 3, Informative

Well, it did nothing for the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union.
Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 16:12 · Score: 0

Graffiti I saw in Poland in 1989, translated: "There is no freedom without solidarity."
Re:Uh... by Grave · 2011-10-14 16:59 · Score: 3, Informative

"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?
Re:Uh... by interval1066 · 2011-10-14 17:08 · Score: -1, Flamebait

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.

--
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Re:Uh... by Billly+Gates · 2011-10-14 17:32 · Score: 1

I disagree.
The Tea Party was unfocused too at first assuming you are more right leaning judging by your posts. Its message was a generalist hate spending and less taxes. It grew and got narrowed down over time.
This is the early formation of the other group.I don't think it is a leftist group per say and here are my arguments for that. As a conservative does it anger you that tax money was used to bail out banks? Does it bug you that all they did was loan it back to you as the tax payer in the form of lending back to the goverment with interest? Does it bother you that corporate interests are hurting chances for smaller businesses to suceed through more regulations aimed at the smaller ones? How about our government printing money to inflate our money supply more and punish savers with crappy interest rates?
I just gave conservative arguments to what the occupy movement stands for as I think they are pretty universal across the spectrum. True some cry unfair at student loans, and that some people want more goverment role who are left wing and also involved in this movement. From what I gather they are anti wall street, bailouts, and corrupt government. This hurts everyone regardless of spectrum and ideology. Many there are also out of work too with some who have been out for years who were not losers but had decent jobs and were laid off through no fault of their own. They have a right to be angry at the goverment printing money out. Oddly the far right and the far left can vote similiarly but for totally different reasons if you ask any political scientist.
WIth real unemploument pre-1994 standards at %16 and %22 for underemployment you can expect outrage and protests. This movement has anger across all spectrums in actually. Ron Paul even says they have a right to be upset and be there.
Yes these guys at Wall Street need to go to jail and I wonder what would of happened if we let the big banks die a horrible death. You can't say no to socialism and paying for dead beats, yet pay people who just loaned the money back to the government, bought yatchs, and provided no value to society?

--
http://saveie6.com/
Re:Uh... by sudonim2 · 2011-10-14 18:17 · Score: 1

That was actually the (somewhat belaboured and clumsily executed) point of Ghost in The Shell. I've felt for a long time now that the older I get, the more the world looks like a mashup novel of George Orwell and Philip K. Dick. I guess I have to add Masamune Shirow to that list, now. OWS and Anonymous both bear a striking resemblance to the goings on in Stand-Alone Complex.
On another note, there is a lot written in the counter-insurgency (COIN) literature about the difficulty of fighting a decentralized, amourphous enemy and the inability of a traditional, rigidly structured military force to effectively combat it.
Re:Uh... by dynamo52 · 2011-10-14 18:18 · Score: 2

Very well stated! The grandparent poster is thoughtlessly parroting talking points put forward by corporate sponsored propaganda outlets like The Drudge Report, Fox News, and the like. They have it down to a science. They take an isolated fact, strip it of context, frame it in a manner that supports their false narrative, then pound it into the heads of people like grandparent who, thanks to underfunded schools, never learned critical thinking skills and have been trained to think of fact based information outlets as "the liberal media."

--
Like this comment? I accept Bitcoin! - 153sc8UUBXyp12ofQqfAWDmJrzyiKCYC1x
Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 20:09 · Score: 0

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 ...
[...]
Companies like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are pure gamblers, they pocket the profits when they win.

Just out of interest then, where do companies like these keep their profits, and why aren't they completely screwed by doing that?
PS I don't disagree with your point that these leeches are gaming the system for their own benefit
Re:Uh... by TheRaven64 · 2011-10-14 21:54 · Score: 1

In a variety of places. For example, they can invest in Swiss Francs (not such a good bet anymore) or gold, which are generally safe places to store money. Or they can put them in another one of the pump and dump scams that GS itself operates. For example, their Facebook fund, where they bought a large amount of Facebook stock and then created a fund backed by it. Because they are a single holder, Facebook doesn't have to go public, even though thousands of people may invest in the fund, which means that they don't have to publish their balance sheets and so no one actually knows how much they're worth. This lets GS set the value of the fund completely arbitrarily. Typically, to a large value right up until they and their friends have sold all of their shares in it and then to a more accurate value soon after...
Most of the time they don't 'keep' their profits anywhere - they move them around in a massive shell game. This is generally beyond the abilities of small investors.

--
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Re:Uh... by TheRaven64 · 2011-10-14 22:04 · Score: 1

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 the top of real work.
One of my friends is a doctor, training to be a neurosurgeon. She works stupidly long hours, including working most weekends and being on call in the evenings. She makes far less than I get offered to work on HFT. Apparently our society values the leeches more than the real contributors of value.

--
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Re:Uh... by Eunuchswear · 2011-10-14 22:14 · Score: 1

Which is why the French slogan is "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite".
Freedom only comes from Equality. Equality only comes from Solidarity.

--
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Re:Uh... by drsquare · 2011-10-15 01:17 · Score: 1

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... by Larryish · 2011-10-15 01:25 · Score: 1

Also relevant:
http://i.imgur.com/3N3v6.jpg
Re:Uh... by citizenr · 2011-10-15 03:06 · Score: 1

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 :)

--
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Re:Uh... by miro2 · 2011-10-15 03:52 · Score: 1

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.
No, that's the one of the three simple tropes used by unthinking people to criticize the protests. The three are:
1) that these are just dirty bored privileged kids interested in sex, drugs, and partying
2) that the protestors have no demands at all, and therefore have nothing important to say
3) that they are just jealous of those with money and want to steal from them
If you take the time to actually investigate what is going on, you will see that none of these are true as a whole (even if FoxNews can find an idiot protestor that seems to prove otherwise). Think about it: if your generalization were true, you would not see thousands of people protesting in hundreds of cities across the nation. It may be hard for you to believe, but most people dont want to steal from you. They dont want want to steal from the rich any more than flat tax people want to steal from the poor.
The protestors are not upset that some people are richer than they are. They are upset because there is something deeply wrong with this country. Our nation is moving more and more towards a third-world system in which it is getting harder and harder for the have-nots to better their position. Wealth is becoming concentrated in the hands of just a few, not because they are the hardest workers (news flash: they are not), but because the system was bent in their favor from the beginning. And the political system is becoming an insular closed-loop in which politicians are unwilling to make any kind of significant change that would push us out of this mess, lest they reduce the flow of money to their campaigns.
The protestors dont want your money. They want a fair system, in which hard-working people can support themselves and raise a family with relative ease. They want a system that encourages a strong middle class, so that we dont have a situation in which the top few percent pay most of the taxes and politicians wont listen to the rest. They dont want to freeload -- they want the American dream. We can have that country again. But its going to require people paying attention to big dreamers, who make a lot of irritating noise about changing the status quo.
Re:Uh... by Herve5 · 2011-10-15 04:43 · Score: 1

...by posting AC you prevent me to filter you up for next time :(

--
Herve S.
Re:Uh... by Dynedain · 2011-10-15 05:25 · Score: 1

No strong structure may be great, if you have strong goals.
Right now it's an angry populist movement expressing often incompatible slogans and agendas. Anger at the status quo and large scale expression like this is a great thing. But if you can't make concise consistent points, how do you expect to get any change?

--
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Re:Uh... by FoolishOwl · 2011-10-15 07:12 · Score: 1

The lack of clear demands is a serious problem for this incipient movement. At the movement, *every* political faction I know of is trying to co-opt it. I've been getting fundraising emails from the Democrats, claiming that they represent the aspirations of the protesters. The BBC had a story claiming the slogans of the Occupy Wall Street protesters were indistinguishable from those of the Tea Party. I saw Bloomberg News interviewing traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange who shamelessly claimed that they were on the side of the protests -- only wouldn't the protesters please protest the government, instead of the traders who were busy trying to create jobs?
The lack of a key demand makes it incredibly easy for the power structure to undermine a movement.
Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-15 07:42 · Score: 0

In the 1950s America experienced its greatest period of economic prosperity, it also had an income tax rate of 90% over $200,000. (About two million, today.)
Re:Uh... by Coren22 · 2011-10-17 04:22 · Score: 1

Democrats get the most money out of Hollywood, what is your point?

--
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?

Alternative Internet by virb67 · 2011-10-14 12:44 · Score: 1

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.

Re:Alternative Internet by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 13:31 · Score: 0

Of course, until some users are more users than others...

Re:so do what load up on student loans and learn s by Pseudonym+Authority · 2011-10-14 12:46 · Score: -1, Troll

This is my main problem with this ``movement''. I would love to see bankers and their lobbyist dragged into the streets, hanged upside-down from lamp post, and eviscerated just as much as the next guy. I, however, cannot stand the idea of supporting those people. 99% of them are stupid whores who have 3 kids, got a $100,000 degree in some bullshit subject like Black Studies, 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. *click*

Or car batteries + masturbating over The Bell Jar by Rogerborg · 2011-10-14 12:56 · Score: 0

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.

waste of time by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 12:58 · Score: 1, Insightful

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.

Re:waste of time by MobileTatsu-NJG · 2011-10-14 13:40 · Score: 2, Interesting

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.

--

"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:waste of time by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 13:55 · Score: -1

So, they got the videos without wasting time with the stupid pedal thing, right?
Re:waste of time by MobileTatsu-NJG · 2011-10-14 14:02 · Score: 1

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.

--

"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:waste of time by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 14:06 · Score: 0

Yet I'm definitely reading about their thing on the frontpage of slashdot. Would a story about people making phonecalls have made it all the way to my screen over here on the other side of the world?
Re:waste of time by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 14:07 · Score: 0

Do you understand that the whole point of the protest is being there?
Re:waste of time by Dachannien · 2011-10-14 14:32 · Score: 3, 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.
Re:waste of time by Dasher42 · 2011-10-14 16:55 · Score: 1

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.

Meh: by Hartree · 2011-10-14 12:59 · Score: 1

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.

Re:Meh: by wierd_w · 2011-10-14 13:13 · Score: 1

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
Re:Meh: by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 13:36 · Score: 1

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.
Wow, what a narrow minded response.
Has it ever occurred to you that many people around here (I live in Berkeley) don't have gas mowers because we live in a dense area, don't have huge McMansion style lawns, and that a push mower is perfectly adequate, and that a gas mower would be way overkill, not to mention annoyingly noisy and polluting?
Also, fwiw, a push more is actually more expensive than a cheap powered mower, probably because it's a low volume product. But it's still imho a better solution for many people.
Re:Meh: by Hartree · 2011-10-14 16:11 · Score: 1

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.
Re:Meh: by j_sp_r · 2011-10-14 18:53 · Score: 1

Why just not get an electric mower?
Re:Meh: by GameboyRMH · 2011-10-15 06:01 · Score: 1

They should get a bunch of people with solar-charger backpacks to put the equipment inside them. Then they can just mill around the same general area to have a wifi mesh network and there will be no central "server table" to raid. There are plenty of routers that will run on 12V power and motorcycle batteries can be put in the backpacks so the network doesn't go down when a cloud moves over. Likewise they can keep the laptops spread out so that people can close them and run when the cops show up. For a charging station, get one of those folding solar mats. This is a relatively costly solution though, photovoltaic gear is bloody expensive. You sure as hell won't find any one piece of useful equipment for under 3 digits, and prices upwards of $300 aren't unusual.
To cut down on conversion losses, instead of going 12VDC to 120VAC to 5VDC for phones, they should have the inverter and and a 12V-USB charge adapter hooked up separately to the 12V source.

--
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel

Easy solution by Black+Parrot · 2011-10-14 13:02 · Score: -1, Troll

Maybe they could capture the electrons from all the "Look Ma, I'm Getting Arrested" messages, and use them to power their systems.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade

Re:so do what load up on student loans and learn s by iluvcapra · 2011-10-14 13:04 · Score: 4, 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."

--
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.

Re:Or car batteries + masturbating over The Bell J by Black+Parrot · 2011-10-14 13:06 · Score: 4, 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.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade

Go solar by f97tosc · 2011-10-14 13:06 · Score: 1

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...

Re:Go solar by jtownatpunk.net · 2011-10-14 14:06 · Score: 1

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 (even a mom-n-pop store!) and buy that off the shelf. It's called a USB Vehicle Charger on most sites and Best Buy has a dual-port for $11.99. You can get a cigarette lighter socket with alligator clips at Rat Shack for $9.99. [facepalms.jpg]
Did nobody think about this stuff ahead of time?
Re:Go solar by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 17:14 · Score: 0

That USB vehicle charger you're talking about probably contains a linear regulator, which means that it's just taking the excess power (in this case 7/12=58% of the power) and letting it go as heat.
They probably ordered a real DC-DC converter which can be 90%+ efficient.
Re:Go solar by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 23:41 · Score: 0

there's a difference between an up to 45W solar panel and a guaranteed 150W of pedal power. also the panel is more easily stolen or seized, ruining your set up.
Re:Go solar by jtownatpunk.net · 2011-10-15 14:02 · Score: 1

And you're talking about 2.5 watts (max) per USB plug so you're saving, what, about 1.5 watts per adapter at most? Seems like a poor ROI.

Re:so do what load up on student loans and learn s by darthdavid · 2011-10-14 13:13 · Score: 1

I was going to say don't feed the trolls, but then I realized that this might be a case of Poe's Law :/

Re:so do what load up on student loans and learn s by iluvcapra · 2011-10-14 13:21 · Score: 1

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.

Not the same problems, different ones by MaizeMan · 2011-10-14 13:21 · Score: 2

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.

Really.... by Lumpy · 2011-10-14 13:22 · Score: 3, 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.

--
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.

Re:Really.... by subreality · 2011-10-14 13:47 · Score: 4, 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?
Re:Really.... by Co0Ps · 2011-10-14 14:02 · Score: 1

Great points. Mod parent up.
Re:Really.... by Solandri · 2011-10-14 14:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

Glad to see that there are NO electronics engineers or other people that have a clue as to what they are doing.
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.
Re:Really.... by ScentCone · 2011-10-14 14:13 · Score: 0

I can see how a slashdot person would focus on that aspect of things. But I'm more interested in what that sort of cluelessness says about the rest of these clowns' practical and critical thinking skills as they insist that they know best how to set fiscal policy, fund businesses, hire people, conduct foreign relations, and all the rest. Blah blah blah. Everything would be just, like, you know, great, man, if, like, only the cool people were, like, saying stuff and like there weren't any rules except like, you know, about who has to pedal the phone charger when, you know, like some hot girls show up at the protest.

--
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Re:Really.... by ScentCone · 2011-10-14 14:16 · Score: -1, Troll

Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man. This isn't, like, Occupy Physics, OK. I just need my phone to work here at this awesome protest so I can Tweet about evil corporations and order some sweet tacos with the Chipotle app on my new iPhone 4S.

--
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Re:Really.... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 14:35 · 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.
Re:Really.... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 14:36 · Score: 1

RRRRRTTTTTTFFFFFFAAAAAA
I wish I could make RTFA in a bigger font. For your convenience:
FTFA: "The conversion process is highly inefficient, however, and the admins reckon they were losing over half the available power in the process – power that literally cost blood, sweat, and tears from the peddlers.
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."
Re:Really.... by MightyMartian · 2011-10-14 14:56 · Score: 3, 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.

--
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Re:Really.... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 15:03 · Score: 0

Oh shut up. :-)
They
Re:Really.... by theoriginalturtle · 2011-10-14 15:13 · Score: 2

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.

--
---------------------------------------
Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
Re:Really.... by dbIII · 2011-10-14 15:33 · Score: 1

When you duct tape stuff together with what you've got then that's what happens.
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? It's a heat pump guys, and that thing in the sky is providing heat you can use to drive it instead of losing a lot in another conversion step.
Re:Really.... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 16:07 · Score: 0

yes, if your source is resource intensive as it is. every little bit helps in a situation like this.
Re:Really.... by SwedishPenguin · 2011-10-14 16:51 · Score: 1

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. :)
Re:Really.... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 16:56 · Score: 0

They are lazy, dirty, and uneducated...they have no jobs, no skills or higher education, no motivation. They're just looking for the free "wealth" that they are "entitled" to from rest of us who actually went to school, got our engineering degree, got a job and paid off our student loans.
I've walked by their "protest" on Market St, no different than any of the other ridiculous protests that happen in SF.
Re:Really.... by tlhIngan · 2011-10-14 18:54 · Score: 1

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
.
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...).
Re:Really.... by houghi · 2011-10-14 19:19 · Score: 1

but is it really worth the extra engineering effort
Yes. That is how new things are invented and made.

--
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Re:Really.... by ukemike · 2011-10-14 19:43 · Score: 1

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."

--
-- QED
Re:Really.... by maxwell+demon · 2011-10-14 21:11 · Score: 1

power that literally cost blood, sweat, and tears from the peddlers.
Well, it certainly costs sweat. Maybe it also costs tears. But if it costs blood, they are doing something horribly wrong.

--
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Re:Really.... by TheRaven64 · 2011-10-14 22:09 · Score: 1

A machine that's using 130W is not a laptop, it is a luggable.

--
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Re:Really.... by drinkypoo · 2011-10-14 23:00 · Score: 1

My ace in the hole is a 45W harbor freight system... enough to run a netbook and my WISP connection via POE injector :D

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Really.... by subreality · 2011-10-15 00:28 · Score: 1

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.... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-15 01:17 · Score: 0

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

Set up a windmill on a downtown city street???? Photovoltaic panels at gorund-level shade between downtown skyscrapers???? Don't let facts sully your beautiful world.
Re:Really.... by subreality · 2011-10-15 02:27 · Score: 1

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.
Re:Really.... by GameboyRMH · 2011-10-15 06:11 · Score: 1

True, 12V laptops are very rare. Most use 15-19V.

--
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Re:Really.... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-15 07:15 · Score: 0

Mine is a linear regulator with a little aluminum heatsink which gets worryingly hot.
Re:Really.... by evilviper · 2011-10-15 13:49 · Score: 1

120VAC (not the 150AC the writer failed to fact check)
Meh. 120V AC is just the accepted root-mean squared (RMS) measurement. In fact 150V is also a valid measurement of utility voltage, as anyone with an oscilloscope will tell you...

--
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Re:Really.... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-16 13:01 · Score: 0

I have a car tape converter with one that's more than 10 years old using a switched regulator. It wasn't even rare then.
Re:Really.... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-17 20:54 · Score: 0

(Modern laptops can easily require 75W, 130W, 200+W of power. We're talking of 6-10+A in the DC lead...).
That isn't a big deal, I've got a replacement* laptop power brick that will output 90W either from the mains or a 12V car supply (it claims to be rated for 10A at 12V) and the cable for the 12V connector isn't really any thicker than your average mains cable. If a laptop needs more than that you shouldn't bring it somewhere where you can't plug it in.
*For want of a better term, it has adapters to fit many laptops and can be set to output from 12-24V.

Other options... by benjamindees · 2011-10-14 13:26 · 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.

--
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"

Re:Other options... by poordamnedfool · 2011-10-14 14:23 · Score: 2

But then we would have to like buy gas from big oil, man...
Re:Other options... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 16:03 · Score: 0

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.
You know that these protests get raided by the police from time to time and have no where to actually put a port-a-poty, right?
Re:Other options... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 16:54 · Score: 0

They don't go in porta-potties. They go on Police cars.
Re:Other options... by subreality · 2011-10-14 18:40 · Score: 1

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 doubt they can sustain 24-7 pedaling forever, and if you want to talk in a hippie greengasmic eco-sustainable sense, frankly, the grid energy used to cook the extra food to power the people is probably a lot greater than just charging some batteries.
Re:Other options... by Richy_T · 2011-10-16 05:18 · Score: 1

They're set if someone can bring in a half-dozen batteries once a week by station wagon or hand dolly.
Or, perhaps, by bike.

Re:so do what load up on student loans and learn s by Lumpy · 2011-10-14 13:30 · Score: 2

"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.

Tmare by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 13:31 · Score: -1, Flamebait

TIME WHOLESOME AND Conducted at MIT lead developers BUWLA, or BSD gave the BSD And other party The hard drive to

Re:Or car batteries + masturbating over The Bell J by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 13:32 · Score: 1

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).

Dollar store solutions. by darkonc · 2011-10-14 13:37 · Score: 2

They have 12V -> usb converters in the dollar store here in Vancouver. Each $1 unit provides 2 USB sockets ..one is 1Amp the other is 0.5amp. Then all you need is a 3 head Accessory splitter from Radio Shack (whatever they're now called), and you can charge 6 cell phones at once.

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.

Re:Dollar store solutions. by jamesh · 2011-10-14 14:50 · Score: 1

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...
Re:Dollar store solutions. by dynamo52 · 2011-10-14 17:47 · Score: 1

Most expensive of all however would be th impoud fees. If you park on Market they'll tow your car in minutes even if there isn't a demonstration going on.

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Like this comment? I accept Bitcoin! - 153sc8UUBXyp12ofQqfAWDmJrzyiKCYC1x
Re:Dollar store solutions. by cffrost · 2011-10-14 22:32 · Score: 3, 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.

--
Thank you, Edward Snowden.

"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Re:Dollar store solutions. by GameboyRMH · 2011-10-15 06:08 · Score: 1

I'm thinking a car cover along these lines should do the job...

--
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Re:Dollar store solutions. by evilviper · 2011-10-15 21:32 · Score: 1

I can do far better without really trying...
Trying to charge a 5V device from a 12V battery? Wire two microusb plugs together in series. The end. 100% efficient 6V power, basically free. Hook as many sets of 2x cables to the battery at the same time. Only restriction is that you must always charge devices in pairs, but the cost and efficiency should completely make up for it.

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. P
The difficulty people really don't seem to be getting, here, is that they need something the police aren't going to shut down. Sure, a $100 generator from Harbor Freight is easy, but when that noisy thing starts, expect the cops to find a law against having it on the sidewalk, and get it taken away. Ditto for big solar arrays, wind turbines, and a car idling with cables running across the street... A bicycle seems much safer to bet on. I only wonder why we always see full-sized bikes, and not a folding set of pedal + seat + dynamo which could fold up and be stashed in a briefcase for portability.

--
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant

Re:so do what load up on student loans and learn s by Pseudonym+Authority · 2011-10-14 13:40 · Score: -1, Troll

Fuck off!

Did anyone read this article? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 13:43 · 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...

Re:Did anyone read this article? by billcopc · 2011-10-14 14:48 · Score: 1

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.

--
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Re:Did anyone read this article? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 15:50 · Score: 0

which they have, in other cities. As a veteran progressive organizer, I'll bet you a dinner at Gary Danko this was done by people who showed up with no interest in doing something effective. Only interested in having fun and doing what they wanted to do. Every movement is plagued by them, and smart organizers give them busywork that keeps them away from what's really happening.
Freakin' batteries work fine. The FiDi has plenty of charging places.
Re:Did anyone read this article? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 17:08 · Score: 0

Apple switches back and forth with ExxonMobil for the title of most valuable corporation in the world. Apple is sitting on gazillions of dollars. and these morons who hate big corporations are probably Apple's biggest fans.
Yeah...they say this is the beginning of a movement. Well it's a long, stinky movement.
Re:Did anyone read this article? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 21:10 · Score: 0

Seriously, what did you expect from SF hipsters?
Actually, I believe they were not actually protesting, just set up some entertainment while waiting for the iPhone 4s...
Re:Did anyone read this article? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-15 13:25 · Score: 0

Obviously they are talking about Final Cut Pro, and also probably Photoshop (even though Photoshop is cross platform).
A lot of creative graphic design people are clueless when it comes to technical awareness, gravitate towards Macs because they are prettier and more fashionable, and live in fear of Linux, and even the idea of using the Korn shell in a mac. Microsoft is well understood to be misanthropic in its business practices among creative people, and although the same could be argued about Apple, such stigma is dissipated by Apple's panderment to luxury, design and the status that comes with it's price tags.
Re:Did anyone read this article? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-15 15:38 · Score: 0

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...
Video editing (rabid anti-apple guy here) but most of the video editing crowd do work on Mac and at my event we have thousands of hours of video (multiple cameras and whatnot) to process asap, (btw any video editor In Lisbon, Portugal *help*.

Re:so do what load up on student loans and learn s by Vegeta99 · 2011-10-14 13:43 · Score: 1

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?

Re:so do what load up on student loans and learn s by Pseudonym+Authority · 2011-10-14 13:54 · Score: 0

I didn't say that they those who weren't millionares were losers, I didn't even say that the cause wasn't worthy, I says that there are too many self-important people there who think that they deserve the world there. And they rarely even treat it like more than a fucking party. I've seen the ``movement'' here in Austin. A few dozens of weirdos who have nothing better to do, and college students who were tweeting about it on their $3000 Macbook.

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.

Re:so do what load up on student loans and learn s by Pseudonym+Authority · 2011-10-14 13:56 · Score: 0

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.

Re:so do what load up on student loans and learn s by Pseudonym+Authority · 2011-10-14 14:02 · Score: 1

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.

Read by choongiri · 2011-10-14 14:04 · Score: 0

this: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/12/1025555/-Open-Letter-to-that-53-Guy

FWIW... by KingAlanI · 2011-10-14 14:11 · Score: 1

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.

Wall Street insiders steal from outsiders by nido · 2011-10-14 15:05 · Score: 1

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:

Where do the short sellers get the shares to sell into the market? As Jim Puplava explained on FinancialSense.com on September 24, 2011, they "borrow" shares from the unwitting true shareholders. When a brokerage firm opens an account for a new customer, it is usually a "margin" account - one that allows the investor to buy stock on margin, or by borrowing against the investor's stock. This is done although most investors never use the margin feature and are unaware that they have that sort of account. The brokers do it because they can "rent" the stock in a margin account for a substantial fee - sometimes as much as 30% interest for a stock in short supply. Needless to say, the real shareholders get none of this tidy profit. Worse, they can be seriously harmed by the practice. They bought the stock because they believed in the company and wanted to see its business thrive, not dive. Their shares are being used to bet against their own interests.
...
In the meantime, Puplava advises investors to call their brokers and ask if their accounts are margin accounts. If so, get the accounts changed, with confirmation in writing.

--
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com

Re:Wall Street insiders steal from outsiders by benjamindees · 2011-10-14 16:25 · Score: 1

When a brokerage firm opens an account for a new customer, it is usually a "margin" account - one that allows the investor to buy stock on margin, or by borrowing against the investor's stock. This is done although most investors never use the margin feature and are unaware that they have that sort of account.
I would really like to see some evidence of this (anecdotal or otherwise) as well as the names of the brokerages who have done this.

--
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"

Occupy slashdot! by xmorg · 2011-10-14 15:42 · Score: 1

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!

Really? by Hartree · 2011-10-14 15:44 · Score: 1

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.

Re:Really? by Dasher42 · 2011-10-15 09:03 · Score: 1

They aren't even allowing "open flames" of various sorts on the sidewalk in front of the Federal Reserve building. A generator would be shut down by the police in a heartbeat. This is a highly pedestrian inner city and they're touchy about that.
A quick peek at Google Maps street view might have been more relevant.

Just maybe... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-14 15:49 · Score: 0

... 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.

Negative Comments by Ozoner · 2011-10-14 15:52 · Score: 1

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.

Re:Negative Comments by Ozoner · 2011-10-14 15:55 · Score: 1

Paid Posing ?
Was supposed to be "Paid Posting", but I think I like Paid Posing better...
Re:Negative Comments by CadentOrange · 2011-10-14 21:48 · Score: 1
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.
I suppose that's one way of looking at it.
Or it could be that most Slashdot posters have highly attuned bullshit detectors and realise that these protestors:
1. 1. Don't have a coherent message
2. 2. Don't have viable solutions
and are thus deserving of the derision they're getting.

Re:so do what load up on student loans and learn s by darthdavid · 2011-10-14 18:21 · Score: 1

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...

Re:so do what load up on student loans and learn s by sourcerror · 2011-10-14 18:40 · Score: 1

"Steve Jobs famously dropped out of college in order to study calligraphy. "

He studied calligraphy in a college. (While not being enrolled.)

Occupy Portland doing something similar by leftie · 2011-10-14 19:40 · Score: 1

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

Hardly a waste of time by ukemike · 2011-10-14 21:43 · Score: 2, Informative

Anyone who says he doesn't get what these demonstrations are about is clueless or lying. We want this country to be run for the benefit of all the people. It's that simple, and that complex. Though I don't fully agree with it, I think that the Occupy Oakland website makes some good points:

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

Re:Hardly a waste of time by bryan1945 · 2011-10-15 03:35 · Score: 1

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 Rich/Top 1% more.
How do politicians and the 1% "Step aside!"? Do the politicians all resign, and the 1% move somewhere else?
So if you want to call me clueless, which is basically what every Occupier supporter has called me, rather than explain what the goal is here in any defined terms. I'm neither Pro- or Anti- Occupier, I just want to know what the hell they are trying to do besides sling slogans around. Thanks.

--
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Re:Hardly a waste of time by Dachannien · 2011-10-15 10:38 · Score: 1

You pretty much proved my point - even the movement organizers themselves refuse to focus on achievable objectives. You actually separate yourself from the rest of the movement (and make yourself sound far more sane, though I disagree with most of your list of demands) by coming up with achievable objectives on your own.
I understand what the protests are about - frustration with the economic fallout over the past several years and the failure of the jobs market to adequately recover. What I don't understand is what the objectives of this movement are, and that's because there are no objectives.

But I do... by denzacar · 2011-10-15 00:04 · Score: 1

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 by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-15 00:25 · Score: 0

OccupyKC has a solar panel array

Or it could be the case of... by denzacar · 2011-10-15 00:37 · Score: 1

...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

Re:Or it could be the case of... by CadentOrange · 2011-10-15 03:07 · Score: 1

*mutes his bullshit detector* Sorry I couldn't hear you above the din. Can you point me to a coherent mission statement/objective of these protesters? Can you also point me to viable solutions / steps that will help achieve these objectives? Thanks.
Re:Or it could be the case of... by denzacar · 2011-10-15 05:12 · Score: 1

You need a mission statement now to know that things are bad and wrong, or is that just to have an opinion?
And an objective... Well... how do I put this without sounding like an ass?
Protesting against the current situation kinda IS their objective.
You know... it's what people with SOME control over their own actions are supposed to do once their trust has been violated.
First by other people with more resources and less scruples, then by the people who were supposed to make sure that stuff like that does not happen.
Less civilized people would simply invest in some matches and rope and went and had themselves some fun in the more affluent parts of the town.
Viable solutions?
Well... Like I said, what you are looking at here are people who had their trust betrayed but who still cling to the idea of Democracy, being nice about it, trying to sort of... "jump-start" the democratic process.
Trying to get the politicians, the people responsible, even the Joe Average to get off their asses and fix this - for them and for the Joe who doesn't really feel like being on the business side of the police club, but who can bitch about things with the best of them.
As such, they really can't have a viable solution/strategy other than "stay visible".
They are not bullshiting you. They are NAIVE.
They want the people who fucked things up to fix them, and they want the people who can't be bothered to even give them "moral support" - to do SOMETHING to fix the fuckup (the first ones) and join them (the second ones).
Frankly, I think they have a better chance for getting business-critters and politicians to accept their guilt, fix everything and then lock themselves in prisons for the rest of their lives than getting the support of the people who wouldn't give them the sweat of their balls to save their lives.
Cause you know... first ones might actually get bored of doing nothing, or may die of old age and be replaced with someone eager to prove themselves, or EVEN (godforbid) feel actual guilt and responsibility AND have will (and knowledge... and wisdom... and cooperation of their "brethren") to do something useful.
The second ones are happy enough with "proving them wrong" from their armchairs, demanding "coherent mission statement/objectives" and "viable solutions / steps" for said objectives and simply being pleased with themselves for NOT doing something for them.

--
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens

Re:Or car batteries + masturbating over The Bell J by Arancaytar · 2011-10-15 03:04 · Score: 1

As non-idiots know, batteries are a so-called "energy storage device" that requires charging with a "generator".

Yeah, why aren't all exercise bikes generators? by Dr.+Spork · 2011-10-15 03:33 · Score: 1

Several friends have exercise bikes that provide magnetic resistance. Basically, most of the hardware for the making of a dynamo/generator is inside, right? These things are pretty expensive already, so it wouldn't cost much more to make that energy actually usable - as in, you could feed it back into the grid just by plugging in your exercise bike into a socket. Then an app would keep track of how many megawatt hours you generated with your own muscles - an extra source of motivation!

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.

Not just SF by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-15 03:43 · Score: 0

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).

Offtopic: Occupy Regina by msobkow · 2011-10-15 09:24 · Score: 1

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.

Gilligan would be proud. by digitalPhant0m · 2011-10-16 04:06 · Score: 1

Now, they just need to replace the car batteries with one's made from coconuts.

With the pics I saw by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-16 11:30 · Score: 0

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.

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OccupySF IT Admins Using Pedal Power For Protest

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