If you're interested in these cases check out
this thread at ars-technica. They seem to be everything you could want in a water cooling system. Allthough the Liquid Nitrogen debate still runs hot.
Sometime back in the late '70's my computer science profs preached that "Requirements is the first phase of programming. You've got to know what it's going to do before you can program it."
When asked what is a requirement they answered "A requirement is defined by its test."
So in order to test first you have to have your requirements under control. Good advise weather you're programming an Athlon in C++ or a 1963 CDC cyber with hollerworth cards.
An error caught in the requirements phase is 10 times easier to fix than in the design phase. An error caught in design is 10 times easier to fix than in implementation.
$60 million dollars will buy not quite 3 jumbo jets (more like 2 and some parts). Maintanence on these jumbo jets would be far more expensive than a train. Airports rated for jumbo jets to land don't yet exist in western Alaska.
There is no ralroad connecting Nome to the Alaska railroad. Even if there was, the Alaska Railroad isn't connected to any thing anyway (it runs between Seward and Fairbanks).
It would be a very large project to connect to any rail line in Canada. Freight would go buy barge to Anchorage - as long as it was on a barge it could go by barge to Russia.
You don't need the train to go anywhere to heard tourists on it (see Alaska Railroad above). Princess Tours could probably come up with $60 million as long as they got a posh hotel at either end of this thing and an airport to land jumbo jets full of tourists.
NPR just projected Pensylvania for Gore. There were three large states (Michigan, Florida, and Pensylvania) that could go either way and Gore is winning all three of them.
Missouri is keeping its polls open late due to long lines at the polls. The Republicans are going to federal court to get them closed.
I think Mandrake does a nice job with keeping up to date. Their package manager/update system couldn't be any easier. I've been using Mandrake since 6.0 came out and I haven't been disappointed yet.
If your local mirror is/.d try: linux0.cs.uaf.edu/pub/mirror/mandrake/7.2/
I've been using 7.2beta for a few months and I haven't had many problems with it. The only hard part is that you should know who really made your monitor although by default it makes a pretty good guess.
Those of you who want to dual boot a Win 9x system shouldn't overlook lnx4win. This will install linux without repartitioning your hard drive.
I'm writing this on Mandrake 7.2beta - its sweet.
XFree86 4.0.1, KDE 2, Gnome 1.2
All of it is working now why wait for the end of the month when all the mirrors are hammered. Get it now and update to stable after things quiet down.
linux0.cs.uaf.edu
Are American highways really that bad, that you feel you need to practise the drive between San Francisco and L.A.?
Just the part where I5 passes west of the stock yard, but hold out for a 3D smell simulator on your PC first.
I would like to practice driving Winston Grand National stock car on Portland's freeways. Or perhaps a Battle Mech on 217 at rush hour.
I haven't tried this yet but others have had this working on NT and it looks like it will work on W2K. This replaces the M$ authentication routines with standards complient ones. They include kerbrose V.4 and V.5 modules with this.
The k6-2+ (500, 533, 550) was introduced in June. Tom's Hardware published their test in mid July. These new chips have several voltage/speed settings so you can choose the preformance/power consumption tradeoff that makes sense to you. One of the power settings is adaptable.
At low power they only use 3 Watts (Celron 500's use 28 Watts). At full speed they use 16 Watts and are roughly the same speed as a similarly clocked Celeron.
These new chips have the same amount of L2 Cache as a Celeron and are therefore faster than the old K6-2's.
Old Socket 7 chips use less board real estate than newer chip formats (the mother boards can be smaller and cheaper)
I'd love to have one of these for an old super7 system - $100 to make it relatively up to date.
My brewery puts beer out in 6-packs of 12 oz. bottles - most breweries do. When it rolls out the door I have something like $13.43 of variable costs in each case of beer of that $10.11 was costs for packaging. Putting beer into 12 oz bottles is about as big a pain in the ass as you can find - IF YOU WOULD BUY BEER IN ANYTHING ELSE WE WOULD PACKAGE IT THAT WAY. Consumer demand is driving the big empty software boxes.
When I get a package that is over packaged I remove the part I want from the package and leave the excess packaging at the store. If everyone did this retailers would start stocking products with less packaging.
I've had trouble with Mandrake 7 on any older machine I've tried it on - both SCSI and IDE CDROMs. The problem was very much as you describe. It was reading everything just fine until it sudenly couldn't find some file. On my "newer" machines 7.0 installed without a hitch. On my machines pieced together from auction treasures and dumpster scores 6.1 works fine but 7.0 is a no go.
I think it may be a matter of memory. 96 meg seems to be enough 48 meg is not enough. Can anyone else confirm this?
I've been convinced for some time that there are parallels between the growth of Linux and the growth Microbrews (Domestic Specailty beer to be accurate). People tend to focus on growth rate (there are 40% more Linux users this year than there were last year) than on overall Market share growth. I suspect Linux could get a hold on the desktop and grow until it gets to about 10% market share - then market share growth will drop like a rock.
I'm a brewer/programmer. I started Ravens Ridge Brewing in Fairbanks AK - the second oldest brewery in the state. I also work as a programmer - the product isn't as much fun but the work environment is good and it pays better. I must say that in "zeal for their product" beer geeks and Linux geeks are very much alike.
There are some differences so this parallel may not be perfect. Linux is free (or very inexpensive), domestic specialty beer commands a higher price. The government has punished large breweries enough that they check their dirty monopolist tendincies. How many people think Micro$oft is going to get a penalty like "You can't sell any software for 16 years, then we're going to regulate the holy snot out of you and you're going to pay tax on every box of software you send out the door"? Anhiser-Busch, Miller, and Coors are all quite freindly to small brewers. There not angels - Auggie if you read slashdot I know you have two of my kegs and I'd like them back.
Brewers are well respected by their communittees. They've been working at this for 5500+ years. Is there something that your LUG can do to serve your town? Jon maddog Hall has done some good works - I'm glad karma paid him back for all those students he fed.
Jon, if you have openings at you college let me send you a case of my Vitea.
Plastics (or polymers in general) are a huge part of everyday life. I would probably starve if it weren't for teflon - well maybe not but washing up would certainly cut into the time I have for watching TV.
Other impressive materials include Stainless steel. Imagine life without beer - that last beer you had was almost certainly brewed in statinless steel. The beer can and beer bottle are also marvels of 20th century engineering that would not have been possible without materials science.
So there you have it Plastics, ceramics, Meturgy, and Zymurgy - four of the most important technologies in our lives today barely making the list at number 20.
NPR had a story this morning about two schools. One had a lot of cash and used the Web for just about everything. The other didn't have much cash and didn't even have an outside internet line. What they did have was a LAN and a bunch of machines that the kids themselves put together and keep running.
I built two systems this summer. Both had overclocked Celron 366's.
My friend has way too good a job for a young single guy and wanted a great computer for gaming. We decided that an overclocked 366 would be just the ticket. We got two celron 366's for $148 off of E-Bay; he'd get the one that could do 550 and I'd take the other one and put together a 366 system out of less expensive parts.
His system has an ABIT BE-6 motherboard, a Viper 770 Ultra video card, and a Western Digital ATA66 hard drive, name brand CAS2 memory, and an ASUS Slotket adapter.
For my 366 system I purchased an A-Trend bx motherboard (I don't have it here with me as I'm at work right now) mainly because it was cheap, a $50 8mb AGP video card, no name CAS3 memory (I'm pushing it to CAS2), and a Jet Slotket converter (very cheap).
We put his system together first. We carefully sanded the Celeron slug and heatsink down flat. Put a thin layer of thermal grease on. The machine came up and ran but wasn't very stable until we upped the voltage to 2.3 volts. We tried both CPUs and it didn't seem to make much difference. This system isn't the very picture of stability but it's good enough.
Then I built my system after I got done scrounging the parts (on the cheap as much as possible). I wanted to see if it would overclock to 550 but I was expecting that it would not. This thing is quite solid at 550. This thing is running Windows 98 on it so I'm not going to say it never hangs but I don't think I have hardware issues. By the way there is no voltage adjustment on this board so I'm running standard voltage.
So if you're going to overclock a 366 be carefull about installing the heat sink. Don't believe everything you read about motherboards. Choose your video card for stability. I think that my friend's system is held back because Diamond hasn't put out any new drivers for that video card.
While checking on friends in Seattle came accross some informative E-mail. I've removed message headers and full names but the rest is the genuine article:
------------------------------------------------ -- > I'm writing to all of you to let you know about what happened on Capital Hill last night - I have seen some media coverage about this, but in my opinion, it's not very accurate.
Yesterday, I was in support of the police. Now, I don't trust them and I am left feeling upset and nervous about what's going to happen next.
Last night, at about 9pm, all was pretty much normal on Broadway. Some shops were closed, but most restaurants were open. Bill and I walked down to Cafe Septieme for a drink.
We were there for about 20 minutes when we noticed some people going by with scarves around their noses and mouths. Then we saw more people... now running...down the street. It wasn't a huge crowd...mostly just the normal number of people wandering down Broadway at 9 in the evening. Next thing we knew, there was an overwhelming show of force by the police and the National Guard. It looked like 100 or so riot police, parading down Broadway, firing tear gas indiscriminately as they went. The restaurant locked down, put towels under the door and we just stood there, amazed. We motioned from the restaurant window to the police to stop. We called the mayor's office from the payphone but his voice mail was full. The street was filled with a cloud of tear gas. Just enough tear gas to sting the eyes made it into the restaurant.
Just a little background - Capital Hill is NOT in protest free zone, nor is there a mandatory curfew there. The police followed a group of protesters from downtown who peacefully left there at the 7pm curfew. So why was the Riot Force on Capital Hill to begin with? To keep the peace? Is tear gassing a neighborhood with a large population over a handful of protestors appropriate? I don't think so.
As we tried to get home, the police were blocking Broadway about a block south of where I live. A group of angry (but peaceful) crowd of residents was gathering and chanting, "GO HOME". I found myself joining in with "NOTHING VIOLENT IS HAPPENING HERE! WE LIVE HERE! WHY ARE YOU HERE?"
No one was overturning trash cans or breaking windows - we just wanted the cops to stop tear gassing our neighborhood. So the police decided to start firing tear gas again. Let me tell you, that stuff really hurts. I feel like I have a sunburn today under my eyes.
The crowd scattered, and the police finally started to retreat. We then made our way back to the apartment. I'm not sure what happened next, but a large crowd of people followed the cops as they retreated. There was no violence and not a single window was broken.
The crowd wound up in a standoff with the police near the East Precinct. The media started to report that there was looting. It didn't look like any looting was going on. From my apartment, you could see flashes of light and hear the booms of the tear gas being fired. When it quieted down, we decided to go down and see what was happening.
Down on Pine street, between Broadway and the KFC, there were hundreds of Capital Hill residents gathered. A few (and I mean 2) people had anti-WTO signs...but this was a group of mostly residents. they were chanting "OFF OUR HILL!" at the police. A few people started trying to start trouble by turning over dumpsters - they were quickly stopped by everyone else who didn't want to tarnish the peaceful intent of the residents. But there was certainly no vandalism, window breaking or looting.
The cops stood their ground for a long time. And around 2 in the morning, people started to disperse. It looked like the police were just riding out the standoff and people were leaving peacefully. So we decided to leave (as it was cold and we were soaked by the rain). We relieved that they didn't start tear gassing again. The police outnumbered the crowd at this point.
As we got about 5 blocks away, we started to hear chanting...then we heard about 13 rounds of tear gas go off. We looked down Broadway, and saw a cloud of tear gas emerge from the scene. Then, immediately, 5 blocks away, we could feel it. It was strong, strong stuff. I couldn't see and I was in some serious pain. Yet I was no where near the standoff at that point. I'm sure that stuff made it into people's apartments, where there are families.
I don't know what's going to happen now. It seems that this is no longer about the WTO. The police, who underreacted on Tuesday are now overreacting and involving the general population in stopping a handful of irresponsible protestors. The unwarranted presence and force of the police is adding fuel to this problem. So now, we get to live in a police state until this stupid conference is over.
Great.
Ginny
------------------------------------------------ The author of the following is described as being "pretty right-wing, and doesn't acknowledge a big distinction between protestors & vandals here"
-----Original Message----- Subject: capitol hill = warzone
I figure you guys would like to here what happened yesterday other than what was on the news.
At about 8:pm if you were on Broadway last night, you were royally screwed. About 1000 protestors marched up Denny, crossed over to Pine, and made there way to Broadway and Harrison, about 1 diagnal block from my apartment. All through this they were being basically pushed out of the curfew zone by police and nationl guard.
At this time I was in Broadway Bar & Grill with 2 friends waiting for my girlfriend to get back from work (she is a sound person for a the press). Next thing you know the National Guard and riot police make their move. Now remember this is not a curfew zone, and the cops basically pushed these protestors (mostly out of towners) into our residential neighborhood.
Within minutes Broadway is being teargassed and concussion bombs and rubber bullets and rubber grenades are going off. This all at 8:pm on broadway, when alot of residents are out. Broadway Bar & Grill was getting filled with tear gas even though they locked the doors.
Then it stops....or so we think. All is quiet for about a half-hour as they stand on the north side of Broadway (both pretestors, cops, and majorly pissed of capitol hill residents). I meet my girlfriend (whose apartment building is right on Broadway). We go to her apartment, and then leave to go to mine (I wanted to put Banky in his doggy kennel so he wouldn't be running around all crazy because of the noise and ruckus). We walk outside, get about 5 feet mout the door and the riot police launch a rubber grenade and fire rubber bullets and tear gas at us. I got hit in the back and my calf, my girlfriend got hit in the back. So we both have huge welts from these things. We also were tear gassed which hurts like a bitch. You could not walk down Broadway (and up or down 2 blocks in each direction due to the wind) without getting hit with tear gas. There were parents outside with their kids looking at everything and they got hit, and the tear gas and rubber was fired without any warning. It was a mess. It was really like a war zone on capitol hill.
I went to home (now rememb er this is only like 8:30).So I turn on the news and see now the residents got pissed and had a stand off with the cops because they were bringing this into their neighborhood. This was at Pine and 11th by the KFC.
2:am all of a sudden all these explosions go off, and people start running down broadway. The cops and national guard gassedand shit more mrubber bullets and grenades at the residents, not protestors. So much tear gas was used at just one intesection Pine & 11th, you could heavily feel it at my place and thomas.
The protestors suck, the cops over-reacted, and the citizens and residents of Capitol Hill payed for it. ------------------------------------------------
I know this is pretty long but I have one more short one with a good thought:
----------- On Thu, 2 Dec 1999, Todd wrote:
Oh, yeah, and one other thing: I am going to be writing a letter to the editor and to Tina Podlodowski (head of the Public Safety Committee for now) regarding identification of police. Police in riot gear need to be wearing identifying marks (numbers, perhaps) so that complaints can be made. Anonymity is a scary, dangerous thing.
Podlodowski is being very reasonable (i.e., horrified) regarding the last two days. If the city council has any power at all, some things may change.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're interested in these cases check out this thread at ars-technica. They seem to be everything you could want in a water cooling system. Allthough the Liquid Nitrogen debate still runs hot.
Sometime back in the late '70's my computer science profs preached that "Requirements is the first phase of programming. You've got to know what it's going to do before you can program it."
When asked what is a requirement they answered "A requirement is defined by its test."
So in order to test first you have to have your requirements under control. Good advise weather you're programming an Athlon in C++ or a 1963 CDC cyber with hollerworth cards.
An error caught in the requirements phase is 10 times easier to fix than in the design phase. An error caught in design is 10 times easier to fix than in implementation.
-
$60 million dollars will buy not quite 3 jumbo jets (more like 2 and some parts). Maintanence on these jumbo jets would be far more expensive than a train. Airports rated for jumbo jets to land don't yet exist in western Alaska.
There is no ralroad connecting Nome to the Alaska railroad. Even if there was, the Alaska Railroad isn't connected to any thing anyway (it runs between Seward and Fairbanks).
It would be a very large project to connect to any rail line in Canada. Freight would go buy barge to Anchorage - as long as it was on a barge it could go by barge to Russia.
You don't need the train to go anywhere to heard tourists on it (see Alaska Railroad above). Princess Tours could probably come up with $60 million as long as they got a posh hotel at either end of this thing and an airport to land jumbo jets full of tourists.
Remember - Politics is show business for ugly people
NPR just projected Pensylvania for Gore. There were three large states (Michigan, Florida, and Pensylvania) that could go either way and Gore is winning all three of them.
Missouri is keeping its polls open late due to long lines at the polls. The Republicans are going to federal court to get them closed.
Bush is winning in states he's supposed to win. Gore is winning some states that were up for grabs like Florida & Michigan. This is according to NPR.
www.npr.org
I think Mandrake does a nice job with keeping up to date. Their package manager/update system couldn't be any easier. I've been using Mandrake since 6.0 came out and I haven't been disappointed yet. /.d try:
If your local mirror is
linux0.cs.uaf.edu/pub/mirror/mandrake/7.2/
I've been using 7.2beta for a few months and I haven't had many problems with it. The only hard part is that you should know who really made your monitor although by default it makes a pretty good guess.
Those of you who want to dual boot a Win 9x system shouldn't overlook lnx4win. This will install linux without repartitioning your hard drive.
I'm writing this on Mandrake 7.2beta - its sweet. XFree86 4.0.1, KDE 2, Gnome 1.2
All of it is working now why wait for the end of the month when all the mirrors are hammered. Get it now and update to stable after things quiet down.
linux0.cs.uaf.edu
I know its in Mandrake 7.2beta and it works just fine.
If you can't find it anywhere else try:
linux0.cs.uaf.edu
Are American highways really that bad, that you feel you need to practise the drive between San Francisco and L.A.?
Just the part where I5 passes west of the stock yard, but hold out for a 3D smell simulator on your PC first.
I would like to practice driving Winston Grand National stock car on Portland's freeways. Or perhaps a Battle Mech on 217 at rush hour.
I haven't tried this yet but others have had this working on NT and it looks like it will work on W2K. This replaces the M$ authentication routines with standards complient ones. They include kerbrose V.4 and V.5 modules with this.
http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/itoi/
The k6-2+ (500, 533, 550) was introduced in June. Tom's Hardware published their test in mid July. These new chips have several voltage/speed settings so you can choose the preformance/power consumption tradeoff that makes sense to you. One of the power settings is adaptable.
At low power they only use 3 Watts (Celron 500's use 28 Watts). At full speed they use 16 Watts and are roughly the same speed as a similarly clocked Celeron.
These new chips have the same amount of L2 Cache as a Celeron and are therefore faster than the old K6-2's.
Old Socket 7 chips use less board real estate than newer chip formats (the mother boards can be smaller and cheaper)
I'd love to have one of these for an old super7 system - $100 to make it relatively up to date.
My brewery puts beer out in 6-packs of 12 oz. bottles - most breweries do. When it rolls out the door I have something like $13.43 of variable costs in each case of beer of that $10.11 was costs for packaging. Putting beer into 12 oz bottles is about as big a pain in the ass as you can find - IF YOU WOULD BUY BEER IN ANYTHING ELSE WE WOULD PACKAGE IT THAT WAY. Consumer demand is driving the big empty software boxes.
When I get a package that is over packaged I remove the part I want from the package and leave the excess packaging at the store. If everyone did this retailers would start stocking products with less packaging.
I've had trouble with Mandrake 7 on any older machine I've tried it on - both SCSI and IDE CDROMs. The problem was very much as you describe. It was reading everything just fine until it sudenly couldn't find some file. On my "newer" machines 7.0 installed without a hitch. On my machines pieced together from auction treasures and dumpster scores 6.1 works fine but 7.0 is a no go.
I think it may be a matter of memory. 96 meg seems to be enough 48 meg is not enough. Can anyone else confirm this?
I've been convinced for some time that there are parallels between the growth of Linux and the growth Microbrews (Domestic Specailty beer to be accurate). People tend to focus on growth rate (there are 40% more Linux users this year than there were last year) than on overall Market share growth. I suspect Linux could get a hold on the desktop and grow until it gets to about 10% market share - then market share growth will drop like a rock.
I'm a brewer/programmer. I started Ravens Ridge Brewing in Fairbanks AK - the second oldest brewery in the state. I also work as a programmer - the product isn't as much fun but the work environment is good and it pays better. I must say that in "zeal for their product" beer geeks and Linux geeks are very much alike.
There are some differences so this parallel may not be perfect. Linux is free (or very inexpensive), domestic specialty beer commands a higher price. The government has punished large breweries enough that they check their dirty monopolist tendincies. How many people think Micro$oft is going to get a penalty like "You can't sell any software for 16 years, then we're going to regulate the holy snot out of you and you're going to pay tax on every box of software you send out the door"? Anhiser-Busch, Miller, and Coors are all quite freindly to small brewers. There not angels - Auggie if you read slashdot I know you have two of my kegs and I'd like them back.
Brewers are well respected by their communittees. They've been working at this for 5500+ years. Is there something that your LUG can do to serve your town? Jon maddog Hall has done some good works - I'm glad karma paid him back for all those students he fed.
Jon, if you have openings at you college let me send you a case of my Vitea.
I just checked the Alaska DMV site. Unix is available here -- you choose, Mountain Plate or Big Dipper/Polaris with aurora.
Plastics (or polymers in general) are a huge part of everyday life. I would probably starve if it weren't for teflon - well maybe not but washing up would certainly cut into the time I have for watching TV.
Other impressive materials include Stainless steel. Imagine life without beer - that last beer you had was almost certainly brewed in statinless steel. The beer can and beer bottle are also marvels of 20th century engineering that would not have been possible without materials science.
So there you have it Plastics, ceramics, Meturgy, and Zymurgy - four of the most important technologies in our lives today barely making the list at number 20.
Many IPO's return to the price they start out at aaafter taking off for a few months.
RHAT will very likely find a bottom in the mid to low 20's. It will also probably grow slowly back to the highs it saw in the next 18 months or so.
Something like:
NPR had a story this morning about two schools. One had a lot of cash and used the Web for just about everything. The other didn't have much cash and didn't even have an outside internet line. What they did have was a LAN and a bunch of machines that the kids themselves put together and keep running.
"Heres the article (real audio file)"
You all fire up a Von Nueman machine every day but you completely forget about him for top 10 lists.
I'm glad to see several Eulers in this thread.
I'm suprised Gallios (father of modern algebra) didn't get a mention.
Others worth noting would be Gauss, Fourier, Fibinaci, and Fermat
OK that's a pretty Math-heavy group how 'bout:
Alfred Nobel - blowing stuff up is fun
Buckminister Fuller - I can't beleive he's not a top 10 geek
Linus Pauling - 2 Nobel Prizes (vitaman C is a good thing; Global Nuclear war is not!)
Charlie Papazian - Beer Geek, father of US homebrew and Microbrew movement. If like beer you owe this man a vote!!
I built two systems this summer. Both had overclocked Celron 366's.
My friend has way too good a job for a young single guy and wanted a great computer for gaming. We decided that an overclocked 366 would be just the ticket. We got two celron 366's for $148 off of E-Bay; he'd get the one that could do 550 and I'd take the other one and put together a 366 system out of less expensive parts.
His system has an ABIT BE-6 motherboard, a Viper 770 Ultra video card, and a Western Digital ATA66 hard drive, name brand CAS2 memory, and an ASUS Slotket adapter.
For my 366 system I purchased an A-Trend bx motherboard (I don't have it here with me as I'm at work right now) mainly because it was cheap, a $50 8mb AGP video card, no name CAS3 memory (I'm pushing it to CAS2), and a Jet Slotket converter (very cheap).
We put his system together first. We carefully sanded the Celeron slug and heatsink down flat. Put a thin layer of thermal grease on. The machine came up and ran but wasn't very stable until we upped the voltage to 2.3 volts. We tried both CPUs and it didn't seem to make much difference. This system isn't the very picture of stability but it's good enough.
Then I built my system after I got done scrounging the parts (on the cheap as much as possible). I wanted to see if it would overclock to 550 but I was expecting that it would not. This thing is quite solid at 550. This thing is running
Windows 98 on it so I'm not going to say it never hangs but I don't think I have hardware issues. By the way there is no voltage adjustment on this board so I'm running standard voltage.
So if you're going to overclock a 366 be carefull about installing the heat sink. Don't believe everything you read about motherboards. Choose your video card for stability. I think that my friend's system is held back because Diamond hasn't put out any new drivers for that video card.
While checking on friends in Seattle came accross some informative E-mail. I've removed message headers and full names but the rest is the genuine article:
- --
-
-
-----------------------------------------------
> I'm writing to all of you to let you know about what happened on Capital Hill last night - I have seen some media coverage about this, but in my opinion, it's not very accurate.
Yesterday, I was in support of the police. Now, I don't trust them and I am left feeling upset and nervous about what's going to happen next.
Last night, at about 9pm, all was pretty much normal on Broadway. Some shops were closed, but most restaurants were open. Bill and I walked down to Cafe Septieme for a drink.
We were there for about 20 minutes when we noticed some people going by with scarves around their noses and mouths. Then we saw more people... now running...down the street. It wasn't a huge crowd...mostly just the normal number of people wandering down Broadway at 9 in the evening. Next thing we knew, there was an overwhelming show of force by the police and the National Guard. It looked like 100 or so riot police, parading down Broadway, firing tear gas indiscriminately as they went. The restaurant locked down, put towels under the door and we just stood there, amazed. We motioned from the restaurant window to the police to stop. We called the mayor's office from the payphone but his voice mail was full. The street was filled with a cloud of tear gas. Just enough tear gas to sting the eyes made it into the restaurant.
Just a little background - Capital Hill is NOT in protest free zone, nor is there a mandatory curfew there. The police followed a group of protesters from downtown who peacefully left there at the 7pm curfew. So why was the Riot Force on Capital Hill to begin with? To keep the peace? Is tear gassing a neighborhood with a large population over a handful of protestors appropriate? I don't think so.
As we tried to get home, the police were blocking Broadway about a block south of where I live. A group of angry (but peaceful) crowd of residents was gathering and chanting, "GO HOME". I found myself joining in with "NOTHING VIOLENT IS HAPPENING HERE! WE LIVE HERE! WHY ARE YOU HERE?"
No one was overturning trash cans or breaking windows - we just wanted the cops to stop tear gassing our neighborhood. So the police decided to start firing tear gas again. Let me tell you, that stuff really hurts. I feel like I have a sunburn today under my eyes.
The crowd scattered, and the police finally started to retreat. We then made our way back to the apartment. I'm not sure what happened next, but a large crowd of people followed the cops as they retreated. There was no violence and not a single window was broken.
The crowd wound up in a standoff with the police near the East Precinct. The media started to report that there was looting. It didn't look like any looting was going on. From my apartment, you could see flashes of light and hear the booms of the tear gas being fired. When it quieted down, we decided to go down and see what was happening.
Down on Pine street, between Broadway and the KFC, there were hundreds of Capital Hill residents gathered. A few (and I mean 2) people had anti-WTO signs...but this was a group of mostly residents. they were chanting "OFF OUR HILL!" at the police. A few people started trying to start trouble by turning over dumpsters - they were quickly stopped by everyone else who didn't want to tarnish the peaceful intent of the residents. But there was certainly no vandalism, window breaking or looting.
The cops stood their ground for a long time. And around 2 in the morning, people started to disperse. It looked like the police were just riding out the standoff and people were leaving peacefully. So we decided to leave (as it was cold and we were soaked by the rain). We relieved that they didn't start tear gassing again. The police outnumbered the crowd at this point.
As we got about 5 blocks away, we started to hear chanting...then we heard about 13 rounds of tear gas go off. We looked down Broadway, and saw a cloud of tear gas emerge from the scene. Then, immediately, 5 blocks away, we could feel it. It was strong, strong stuff. I couldn't see and I was in some serious pain. Yet I was no where near the standoff at that point. I'm sure that stuff made it into people's apartments, where there are families.
I don't know what's going to happen now. It seems that this is no longer about the WTO. The police, who underreacted on Tuesday are now overreacting and involving the general population in stopping a handful of irresponsible protestors. The unwarranted presence and force of the police is adding fuel to this problem. So now, we get to live in a police state until this stupid conference is over.
Great.
Ginny
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The author of the following is described as being "pretty right-wing, and doesn't acknowledge a big distinction between protestors & vandals here"
-----Original Message-----
Subject: capitol hill = warzone
I figure you guys would like to here what happened yesterday other than what was on the news.
At about 8:pm if you were on Broadway last night, you were royally screwed. About 1000 protestors marched up Denny, crossed over to Pine, and made there way to Broadway and Harrison, about 1 diagnal block from my apartment. All through this they were being basically pushed out of the curfew zone by police and nationl guard.
At this time I was in Broadway Bar & Grill with 2 friends waiting for my girlfriend to get back from work (she is a sound person for a the press). Next thing you know the National Guard and riot police make their move. Now remember this is not a curfew zone, and the cops basically pushed these protestors (mostly out of towners) into our residential neighborhood.
Within minutes Broadway is being teargassed and concussion bombs and rubber bullets and rubber grenades are going off. This all at 8:pm on broadway, when alot of residents are out. Broadway Bar & Grill was getting filled with tear gas even though they locked the doors.
Then it stops....or so we think. All is quiet for about a half-hour as they stand on the north side of Broadway (both pretestors, cops, and majorly pissed of capitol hill residents). I meet my girlfriend (whose apartment building is right on Broadway). We go to her apartment, and then leave to go to mine (I wanted to put Banky in his doggy kennel so he wouldn't be running around all crazy because of the noise and ruckus). We walk outside, get about 5 feet mout the door and the riot police launch a rubber grenade and fire rubber bullets and tear gas at us. I got hit in the back and my calf, my girlfriend got hit in the back. So we both have huge welts from these things. We also were tear gassed which hurts like a bitch. You could not walk down Broadway (and up or down 2 blocks in each direction due to the wind) without getting hit with tear gas. There were parents outside with their kids looking at everything and they got hit, and the tear gas and rubber was fired without any warning. It was a mess. It was really like a war zone on capitol hill.
I went to home (now rememb er this is only like 8:30).So I turn on the news and see now the residents got pissed and had a stand off with the cops because they were bringing this into their neighborhood. This was at Pine and 11th by the KFC.
2:am all of a sudden all these explosions go off, and people start running down broadway. The cops and national guard gassedand shit more mrubber bullets and grenades at the residents, not protestors. So much tear gas was used at just one intesection Pine & 11th, you could heavily feel it at my place and thomas.
The protestors suck, the cops over-reacted, and the citizens and residents of Capitol Hill payed for it.
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I know this is pretty long but I have one more short one with a good thought:
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On Thu, 2 Dec 1999, Todd wrote:
Oh, yeah, and one other thing: I am going to be writing a letter to the editor and to Tina Podlodowski (head of the Public Safety Committee for now) regarding identification of police. Police in riot gear need to be wearing identifying marks (numbers, perhaps) so that complaints can be made. Anonymity is a scary, dangerous thing.
Podlodowski is being very reasonable (i.e., horrified) regarding the last two days. If the city council has any power at all, some things may change.
[hope, hope, hope]