A lot of the software that you use on your Mac, PC or Linux computer, not to mention your cell phone, is coded in some variant of the C language he invented. Every OS X Mac, and almost every major website, runs on a descendant of the Unix operating system, which he co-developed at Bell Labs in the early 70’s. C was key to the success of Unix, and its modern variant, Linux, both of which are written in C and can be easily ported, or converted, to new processors as they are invented. Ritchie was 71.
OWS/Together: Random Snippets
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If Apocryphal Gandhi was right, it seems like we’re approaching the pivot point between stages two & three. Not “news” (I hope to post more later), just links to some interesting pieces a little outside the spotlight. Chris Hedges at Truthout provides a useful explanation of the ground-level organization in Zuccotti Park, via a 22-year-old artist/waitress named Ketchup:
… “People were worried we were going to get kicked out of the park at 10 p.m. This was a major concern. There were tons of cops. I’ve heard that it’s costing the city a ton of money to have constant surveillance on a bunch of peaceful protesters who aren’t hurting anyone. With the people’s mic, everything we do is completely transparent. We know there are undercover cops in the crowd. I think I was talking to one last night, but it’s like, what are you trying to accomplish? We don’t have any secrets.”…
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“So it’s 9:30 p.m. and people are worried that they’re going to try and rush us out of the camp,” she said, referring back to the first day. “At 9:30 they break into work groups. I joined the group on contingency plans. The job of the bedding group was to find cardboard for people to sleep on. The contingency group had to decide what to do if they kick us out. The big decision we made was to announce to the group that if we were dispersed we were going to meet back at 10 a.m. the next day in the park. Another group was arts and culture. What was really cool was that we assumed we were going to be there more than one night. There was a food group. They were going dumpster diving. The direct action committee plans for direct, visible action like marches. There was a security team. It’s security against the cops. The cops are the only people we think that might hurt us. The security team keeps people awake in shifts. They always have people awake.”
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The work groups make logistical decisions, and the general assembly makes large policy decisions.
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“Work groups make their own decisions,” Ketchup said. “For example, someone donated a laptop. And because I’ve been taking minutes I keep running around and asking, ‘Does someone have a laptop I could borrow?’ The media team, upon receiving that laptop, designated it to me for my use on behalf of the Internet committee. The computer isn’t mine. When I go back to Chicago, I’m not going to take it. Right now I don’t even know where it is. Someone else is using it. But so, after hearing this, people thought it had been gifted to me personally. People were upset by that. So a member of the Internet work group went in front of the group and said, ‘This is a need of the committee. It’s been put into Ketchup’s care.’ They explained that to the group, but didn’t ask for consensus on it, because the committees are empowered. Some people might still think that choice was inappropriate. In the future, it might be handled differently.”…
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Mike Konczal at Rortybomb “Pars[es] the Data and Ideology of the We Are 99% Tumblr“:
… Let’s bring up a favorite quote around here. Anthropologist David Graeber cites historian Moses Finley, who identified “the perennial revolutionary programme of antiquity, cancel debts and redistribute the land, the slogan of a peasantry, not of a working class.” And think through these cases. The overwhelming majority of these statements are actionable demands in the form of (i) free us from the bondage of these debts and (ii) give us a bare minimum to survive on in order to lead decent lives (or, in pre-Industrial terms, give us some land). In Finley’s terms, these are the demands of a peasantry, not a working class.
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The actual ideology of modernity, broadly speaking, is absent… no demands for cheap gas, cheaper credit, giant houses, bigger electronics all under the cynical ”Ownership Society” banner. The demands are broadly health care, education and not to feel exploited at the high-level, and the desire to not live month-to-month on bills, food and rent and under less of the burden of debt at the practical level.
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Better Book Titles: The Communist Manifesto
Brilliant.
Better Book Titles is a clever tumblr which I have been following for months, but I think this recent example might be my favorite:
You should spend some time looking through the archives. It’s probably more amusing for those of you who are litura-cha enthusiasts.
Open Thread.
[via Better Book Titles]
[cross-posted at Angry Black Lady Chronicles]Better Book Titles: The Communist ManifestoPost + Comments (35)
Embolden this
Just 17 percent said they were following the protests “very closely”. Independents — at 19 percent — were keeping the closest eye on the “Occupy” efforts while just 12 percent of Republicans did the same.
Both businessman Herman Cain and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich critiqued the “Occupy Wall Street” protests during Tuesday night’s debate in New Hampshire; Gingrich said that a portion of the protesters were “left-wing agitators who would be happy to show up next week on any other topic”. (He also noted that a portion were “sincere middle class people”.)
Of course, defenders of the relevance of the “OWS” protests will, rightly, note that it remains very much in its infant stages and that many big things in politics once started off quite small.
True enough. And with President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden both mentioning the protests in high-profile forums last week, it’s possible that in a few weeks time these numbers could look very different.
But, today they don’t. And that fact will embolden conservatives.
So in other words, a poll showing a surprisingly uniform (if not all that high yet) amount of interest in the protests across parties will embolden conservatives to Newt Gingrich to continue to describe the protests fairly accurately: as a mix of people who go to a lot of protests (I wouldn’t use the word “agitators” obviously) and middle-class people who don’t usually go to protests.
Also too, it’s simply ridiculous to discuss the comparison with the teahadists without mentioning the fact that Fox News practically invented the tea party. It’s hard for people not to know about something when it’s on the tube 24/7. Let’s compare this to the percentage of NFL fans who are forced to follow that Whitney show, while we’re at it.
Back to the interest among independents…John tells me “Every time someone mentions independents I want to kick a puppy”. But I see it differently here: Democrats have not done enough for the working class. Yeah, that’s partly because Republicans have impeded their efforts. But if you’re not a particularly political person and you hear Democrats wanking about debt reduction and cutting your Social Security at time when you’re out of job, I can see why you might think neither party gives a fuck about you while at the same time being interested in movement that does give a fuck about you.
Poll after poll shows that there’s plenty of real Applebee’s-going Americans who hate the banksters. If the Occupy Together movement truly takes off, it will be in large part because of unions. If there’s a hard-hat riot this time, it won’t be the protesters the hard-hats attack.
Wednesday Evening Open Thread
Via Greg Sargent, Vanity Fair has a long, very positive piece on Elizabeth Warren, “The Woman Who Knew Too Much“:
… At a time of record corporate profits, a time when 14 million Americans are out of work, when millions have lost their homes and, according to the Census Bureau, the ranks of those living in poverty has grown to one in six—that Elizabeth Warren could be publicly kneecapped and an agency devoted to protecting American consumers could come under such intense attack is, ultimately, the story about who holds power in America today.
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When the C.F.P.B. was first proposed to Congress, in early 2009, the Chamber of Commerce, the leading business lobbying group in the country, announced that it would “spend whatever it takes” to defeat the agency. According to the Center for Public Integrity, from 2009 through the beginning of 2010, it would be one of the biggest spenders among the more than 850 businesses and trade groups that together paid lobbyists $1.3 billion to fight financial reform…
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According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in 2010 the financial industry flooded Congress with 2,565 lobbyists. They were financed by the likes of the Financial Services Roundtable, which, according to the Center, paid lobbyists $7.5 million, and is on its way to spending as much or more this year. The Chamber of Commerce spent $132 million on lobbying Washington in 2010. The American Bankers Association spent $7.8 million. As for individual banks: JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in TARP funds from taxpayers, spent nearly $14 million on lobbying during the 2009–10 election cycle; Goldman Sachs, which received more than $10 billion from taxpayers, spent $7.4 million; Citigroup, which was teetering on the brink of insolvency and received a $45 billion infusion, has paid more than $14 million to lobbyists since 2009. And none of this money includes the direct campaign donations these organizations, and their surrogates, made to members of Congress.
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The banks “do not like to lose,” says Ed Mierzwinski, of the National Association of State Public Interest Research Groups, which was part of the grossly outmatched consumer coalition that managed to scrape together a paltry $2 million to lobby in favor of reform…
And on the other side of that race, Glen Johnson Alex Katz at the Boston Globe informs us that Scott Brown’s campaign is so poverty-stricken, it has to “recycle” old quotes from Elisabeth Dole.
How are the battles proceeding in everyone’s neighborhoods, tonight?
Open Thread
New Psych tonight, so that is good news.
Was driving home today, and the trees have really started to change colors. It’s so very pretty, but also depressing. I love the cool temperatures of fall, and I adore the cold in the winter (I love wearing wool socks and having a blanket on my lap while I read/watch tv with the house a crisp 60), but what really does get to me is lack of sun and the permanent grey. So even though the foliage is beautiful this time of year, it is still kind of melancholy, because I know that after nature’s fireworks grand finale with the leaves, then we are in for 4-5 months of gray skies, barren trees, and dirty slushy snow. Guess it is about that time to start taking Vitamin D and using my light machine.
But I digress. NEW PSYCH! HAPPY DANCE!
Florida State Rep. Brad Drake (R-Wackjob) Advocates Execution by Firing Squad; is “So Tired of Being Humane”
I can’t even.
I just read this story and burst into peals of laughter. There’s so much fail here it’s actually hard not to laugh at the sheer insanity of it all:
1) Florida (sorry Floridians1, but FAIL!);
2) Republican (obvious FAIL!);
3) introduced legislation to bring back “Old Sparky” and if that doesn’t work, to provide prisoners with “a lead cocktail.” (FAIL!, FAIL!);
4) He’s tired of being humane (This is redundant; see item 2);
5) Would throw prisoners off a bridge if he could (Seriously?!);
6) Got the idea from some asshole at Waffle House (Yes, seriously.)
So yeah, I laughed.
And I’m not talking “how droll” laughter; I’m talking “these people are nuts; we’re all gonna die” laughter:
Florida state Rep. Brad Drake (R) is angry that Valle’s execution took so long. So angry, in fact, that he introduced a bill yesterday to eliminate lethal injection as a execution method altogether in favor of electrocution or the firing squad. “I’m sick and tired of this sensitivity movement for criminals,” Drake declared.
Drake got this ingenious idea to bring back electrocution and firing squads from an equally ingenious place: a Waffle House. Overhearing a constituent call for such methods, Drake said he decided to file the bill. After all, “if it were up to me we would just throw them off the Sunshine Skyway bridge,” he said: