From my perspective it was mostly about finding consensus. It was a great opportunity to talk to completely random people from a variety of demographics about the issues we care about as individuals, which are different for each person (as opposed to issues the media wants to push, or use as a distraction). A lot of people made a point about what our demands were, or what our direction was. The truth is, it was never about demands, and our only universal goal really was to reach out to our fellow citizens and establish that if you are worried about the direction our nation is heading in, you are not alone! I think our biggest problem as a nation is apathy. The government can kill American citizens with drone strikes, covertly archive all our personal communication, take natural resources and allow corrupt monopolies to form around them, waste trillions of dollars, preserve crooked business institutions, incarcerate more people than any other country in the world, and flat out lie to it's people, and we just shrug our shoulders and say, "Oh well..." The Occupy Movement was one of our biggest opportunities in a while to get together and affirm that we do care, and that if things head south, the people do have the power to change things. I think that was our greatest accomplishment. As far as government policy goes, I don't think the movement changed all too much, but if you look back, the womens' suffrage and civil rights movement didn't reach their goals overnight either. People have been fighting for gay marraige for years. These things take a long time. One day, the government will behave and listen to it's people again, but it won't happen overnight.

Another thing I noticed is that the camp also served as a training ground for the next generation of activists. A lot of the young people came out to participate (possibly because of the Anonymous affiliation) who had never participated in political activism in person before. If you are not familiar with the environment of a political protest that the local and federal institutions dread, you can find yourself in serious trouble very quick. First of all, where there are crowds, there are thieves. On top of that there are hundreds of cops that will not lift a finger for you if you are in need of help. There are spies, undercovers and sometimes agent provocateurs. People get very connected to their cause and are willing to make extreme choices, sometimes en-masse. You need to be aware of the groupthink, and look out for potential problems, because riots or stampedes can occur almost spontaneously. All it takes is an idiot cop to start pepper spraying (or in NY, for the police to pull out the orange mass-arrest nets) or a riot squad to start shoving a large crowd of people, or some idiot to attack the cops and give them an excuse for an all out brawl. I think a lot of people joined in thinking it would be all fun and games, and came out ready to handle themselves in the next political uprising.

Funny how the propaganda machine skews things. I bet you never visited a camp and actually talked to the people... naa. You probably just listened to a bunch of phony reporters on TV talking shit, combined with cherry-picked sound bites. I spent two weeks sleeping on the sidewalk of Manhattan starting on September 17th, while working full time over in Jersey. I'll be the first to tell you, there was a share of people who are a little bit loony, but you'll find them at any protest. On the other hand, I've never met so many people who were in touch with what is going on in our country and in our world. Compared to the average American slob who does nothing but work, shop, and watch TV, these people actually saw the world for what it was, were disgusted, and were willing to make sacrifices to get out and find concensus among their fellow citizens and discuss the real problems our society faces and try to improve things. If you think that is counter-productive, I hope you like what you get for sitting on your ass and doing nothing until election day when you get to choose which lying bastard you want to get blamed for all the bad things that happen to you while the real crooks get away with murder behind the veil.

If apple expects to shake down other companies (especially for trivially obvious patents), then they actually do deserve it when the same thing happens to them.

I would let my former roommate's two year old play super tux kart on my laptop to entertain her. Even though she didn't quite grasp the concept of steering, it always put a glowing smile on her face.

While this is most likely true, I would say that the company's mission statement certainly still does have an impact on the customer through it's implementation.

I have been thinking about this for months now. If I were to build a decentralized social network, I would construct it as a peer to peer network, where your account information is mirrored by enough peers to be accessable around the clock. Public key encryption would be used to protect account details that are only visible to friends, that way people can mirror your private info without being able to read it. This design would make it difficult to sensor, difficult for big brother to sift through, and spare people from needing to run a dedicated server for their account. Unfortunately, I have a lot of reading (about encryption) to do if I were to persue this project, but if anyone is interested, we can toss some ideas around here.

And it's really funny when the bookworm at HQ goes to look up the law that the cop is so sure exists, but can't seem to find it, while you're out on the side of the road and you have all sorts of apparently damning paraphernalia laid out on the trunk of your car. Cops hate it when you know more about the law then they do.

But do we arrest bankers who keep confidential client information in their house while they are on vacation and leave the back door unlocked so their neighbor can feed their cat? That seems like a closer analogy.

It is an import tariff on King Bloomberg's police state so you can't avoid having to pay $14 for a pack of cigarettes.

For people to choose to commit suicide at their workplace is significant. When you are going to take your own life, it's your decision when and where for it to happen. You don't accidentally intentionally kill yourself at your job, you choose to do so.

Well, if you don't want it any more, I'll take it. I got myself an n900 months and months ago and am still finding new uses for it. Ever since I've got it, I have been capable of keeping a telephone, calculator, browser, book reader, flashlight, media library/player, GPS navigation, TV remote and streaming set-top box in ONE pocket. Just be careful, because having so much useful stuff in one place is VERY appealing to thieves :(

Well, here's a word from me at least. Obama can eat a dick. I'm getting so fed up with this gradual transition to full autonomous surveillance. There will be people out in the streets about this when things start getting bad. Soon enough, the schism between reality and the fairy tales they told us about freedom in public school will be too wide even for the American Idol crowd to believe. An interesting time to live. It's just too bad we can't be investing these man-years and resources on attaining sustainability before the Earth becomes a giant radioactive ball of toxic shit inhabited by cannibalistic asshats.

Success is a very relative word here. In cases like this, success can be a company having the PR of Blackwater-errr.... Xe. errr.... Acadami, where failure can be a mob of tens of thousands with torches and sticks and rocks.

Removing an accidental moderation.

fuck you, you ignorant.