we are the 99%, we do not forgive, we do not forget, expect us...,

What other 'disruptively compliant' tools can you think of creating?

Expect a lot more of this. Expect those who use computers to transmit subversive true messages to be labelled terrorists and violently attacked by government authorities. Taking down Occupy Wall St. livefeed operators is just the beginning. This prescient essay, "Waging Peace on the Internet", authored by an Anonymous founder in 2002, describes what's going on pretty well. This essay is the intellectual precursor to recent activities and movements like WikiLeaks and Occupy Wall St. As many of you hopefully know, Anonymous was built by CultoftheDeadCow/Hacktivismo to act as guardian and protector of WikiLeaks. As most of you hopefully also know, Occupy Wall St. was kicked off by Adbusters and Anonynmous, but now has a life of its own.

Hacktivismo | Waging Peace on the Internet by Oxblood Ruffin

There's an international book burning in progress; the surveillance cameras are rolling; and the water canons are drowning freedom of assembly. But it's not occurring anywhere that television can broadcast to the world. It's happening in cyberspace.

Certain countries censor access to information on the Web through DNS (Domain Name Service) filtering. This is a process whereby politically challenging information is blocked by domain address (the name that appears before the dot-com/net/org suffix, as in Tibet.com, etc.). State censors also filter for politically or socially-unacceptable ideas in e-mail. And individual privacy rights and community gatherings are similarly regulated.

China is often identified as the world's worst offender with its National Firewall and arrests for on-line activity. But the idea that the new Mandarins could have pulled this off by themselves is absurd. The Chinese have aggressively targeted the Western software giants, not only as a means of acquiring technical know-how, but also as agents for influencing Western governments to their advantage through well-established corporate networks of political lobbying. Everything is for sale: names, connections, and even national security.

Witnessing hi-tech firms dive into China is like watching the Gadarene swine. Already fat and greedy beyond belief, the Western technology titans are being herded towards the trough. And with their snouts deep in the feedbag, they haven't quite noticed the bacon being trimmed off their ass. It isn't so much a case of technology transfer as digital strip-mining. Advanced research and technical notes are being handed over to the Chinese without question. It couldn't be going better for the Communists. While bootstrapping their economy with the fruits of Western labor and ingenuity, they gain the tools to prune democracy on the vine.

But to focus on Beijing's strategy misses the larger opportunity of treating the spreading sickness that plagues cyberspace. Cuba not only micromanages its citizens' on-line experience, it has recently refused to sell them computers, the US trade embargo notwithstanding. Most countries indulging in censorship claim to be protecting their citizens from pornographic contagion. But the underlying motive is to prevent challenging opinions from spreading and coalescing through the chokehold of state-sponsored control. This includes banning information that ranges from political opinion, religious witness, "foreign" news, academic and scholarly discovery, news of human rights abuses, in short, all the intellectual exchange that an autocratic leadership considers to be destabilizing.

The capriciousness of state-sanctioned censorship is wide-ranging.

• In Zambia, the government attempted to censor information revealing their plans for constitutional referenda.
• In Mauritania - as in most countries - owners of cybercaf s are required to supply government intelligence agents with copies of e-mail sent or received at their establishments.
• Even less draconian governments, like Malaysia, have threatened Web-publishers, whose only crime is to publish frequent Web site updates. Timely and relevant information is seen as a threat.
• South Korea's national security law forbids South Koreans from any contact - including contact over the Internet - with their North Korean neighbors.
  

The risks of accessing or disseminating information are often great.

• In Ukraine, a decapitated body found near the village of Tarachtcha is believed to be that of Georgiy Gongadze, founder and editor of an on-line newspaper critical of the authorities.
• In August 1998, an eighteen year old Turk, Emre Ersoz, was found guilty of "insulting the national police" in an Internet forum after participating in a demonstration that was violently suppressed by the police. His ISP provided the authorities with his address.
• Journalist Miroslav Filipovic has the dubious distinction of having been the first journalist accused of spying because his articles detailed the abuses of certain Yugoslav army units in Kosovo, and were published on the Internet.
  

These are dangerous trends for all of us. The Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) and Hacktivismo are not prepared to watch the Internet's lights dim simply because liberal democracies are asleep at the switch.

Our fathers and grandfathers fought wars defending, among other things, our right to speak and be heard. They even fought to defend unpopular opinions. It is the unpopular opinions that are most in need of defense. Without them, society would remain unchallenged and unwilling to review core beliefs. It is this tension between received truths and challenging ones that keeps societies healthy and honest. And any attempt at preventing the open exchange of ideas should be seen for what it is: censorship.

For the past four years the cDc has been talking about hacktivism. It's a chic word, beloved among journalists and appropriators alike. Yet the meaning is serious. Our definition of hacktivism is, "using technology to advance human rights through electronic media." Many on-line activists claim to be hacktivists, but their tactics are often at odds with what we consider hacktivism to be. From the cDc's perspective, creation is good; destruction is bad. Hackers should promote the free flow of information, and causing anything to disrupt, prevent, or retard that flow is improper. For instance, cDc does not consider Web defacements or Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to be legitimate hacktivist actions. The former is nothing more than hi-tech vandalism, and the latter, an assault on free speech.

As we begin to challenge state-sponsored censorship of the Internet, we need to get our own house in order. There have to be accepted standards of what constitutes legitimate hacktivism, and what does not. And of course, none of this will be easy. Hacktivism is a very new field of endeavor that doesn't rely on mere technical expedience. We have to find new paradigms. (Tossing the letter E in front of a concept that has meaning in meat-space, to borrow a term from the Electronic Disturbance Theatre, is convenient but rarely meaningful). There is no such thing as electronic civil disobedience. Body mass and large numbers don't count as they do on the street. On the Internet, it's the code that counts, specifically code and programmers with conscience.

We need to start thinking in terms of disruptive compliance rather than civil disobedience if we want to be effective on-line. Disruptive compliance has no meaning outside of cyberspace. Disruptive, of course, refers to disruptive technology, a radically new way of doing things; compliance refers back to the Internet and its original intent of constructive free-flow and openness.

But what disruptively compliant, hacktivist applications shall we write, and more importantly, how shall we write them? There are essentially two ways of writing computer programs: closed/proprietary, and, open/public. In non-technical terms, a closed program would be like a menu item in a restaurant for which there was no recipe. An open program would be like a dish for which every ingredient, proportion, and method of preparation was published. Microsoft is an example of a closed, hi-tech restaurant; Linux is its stellar opposite, an open code cafeteria where all is laid bare. For years the technical community has been raging over the absolutes of closed over open code, an argument only slightly more boring than whether Macs are better than PCs.

The answer to this debate is relative; it leans closer to the user's requirements than to the geek community's biases. If the user wants an inflexible, controlled - and often insecure - experience, then closed is the way to go. But if the user opts for greater variety and freedom from control, then flexible, open code is the only option. The choices are similar, although not equivalent, to living in an authoritarian society as opposed to a free one.

Hacktivism chooses open code, mostly. Although there might be very specific instances where we would choose to obscure or hide code, going by the averages we support the same standards-based, open code methodology that built the Internet in the first place. It is germane that users of hacktivist applications sitting behind national firewalls in China and other repressive regimes are more worried about being caught with 'criminal software' than crashing their computers. End user safety is paramount in such instances, and if closing down code would prevent arrests, then so be it. Techno-correctness is a luxury of the already free.

There are numerous arguments for open code, from the rhapsodic possibilities of the Open Source Initiative, through the demotic juggernaut of the Free Software Foundation, to the debate laden pages of Slashdot with its creditable fetish for better security. And everyone is right in his or her own way. But there is another compelling reason to show the code apart from any technical or philosophical considerations.

The field is getting crowded.

Four years ago when cDc first started talking about hacktivism, most Internet users didn't know, or care, about things like state-sponsored censorship or privacy issues. But now the terrain has changed. Increasingly human rights organizations, religious and political groups, and even software developers, are entering the fray, each for unique reasons. It would be premature to call such an unlikely accretion of stakeholders a coalition. In fact, there is every reason to believe there are greater opportunities for carping over differences than leveraging common cause into shared success. But open code may become the glue that binds.

As more and more disparate groups attempt to loosen dictators' restraints over Internet, it's important to keep focused on their common goals and not petty differences. The more transparent and crystalline their progress towards collective goals becomes, the more likely it is that those objectives will be achieved. Open code, like the open and inclusive nature of democratic discourse itself, will prove to be the lingua franca of hacktivism. And perhaps more importantly, it will demonstrate that hacktivists are waging peace, not war.

In 1968 the Canadian communications guru Marshall McLuhan stated, "World War Three will be a guerilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation."

Anyone who's watched the Web after an international incident knows how true that statement is. Teenagers from China have attacked sites in Taiwan and the U.S., and vice versa, just to name one claque of combatants. And although the exchanges are more annoying than truly damaging, they do support McLuhan's theory. As the Internet erupts into battle zones, Hacktivists could become something akin to a United Nations peacekeeping force. But rather than being identified by blue helmets, they'll be recognized by the openness of their code and the quality and safety of their applications designed to defeat censorship and challenge national propaganda.

One key to countering the cadres of information censors in China and elsewhere is the fluidity of open code projects. Another is through peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. P2P has floated into public awareness mostly as a result of the Napster phenomenon. The 'peers' on the network are computers, and yet not so different from a society of peers in a democracy. Some are more powerful than others, but they all have common attributes. This is in contrast with the traditional, and more pervasive, client/server network mechanism, where little computers go to big ones and ask for something, be it a Web page, an application, or even processing power.

What is most interesting about P2P technologies is that they turn the much-ballyhooed Information Superhighway into a two-way street. Peers become both clients and servers, or 'clervers' as one naming convention has it. Files can be shared, a la Napster; or processes from one or many partner computers can be strung together to create supercomputers, among other things. What makes these systems attractive to hacktivist developers is they are difficult to shut down. Large central servers are easy to locate and take down. But clouds of peers in numerous arrays springing up around the datascape are far more problematic.

This is not to say that P2P networks are invincible. Napster got shut down. But when the salt is out of the shaker, it's hard to get it back in. With Naptser down, a legion of even more powerful file-trading devices arose to take its place. The fact that Napster was easy to use and didn't require a steep learning curve was also key to its success, other convergences notwithstanding. This is fundamental to anyone hoping to appeal to non-technical users, many of whom are partially blinded and deafened by national firewalls.

The target user is socially engaged, but not necessarily technically adept. Beneath the surface the programs can be as complicated as you please, but on top, from the functionality/usability perspective, the apps have to be dead simple and easy to use. And they have to be trustworthy.

Here is where the Napster analogy breaks down. Trust was never a paramount factor in using the application. It was a fun loving network developed on the free side of the firewall, where users' greatest worries were, a) Can I find what I want? b) How long will it take to download? c) Is it of good quality? and, d) Do I have time to download four more tunes before I go to the keg party?

No one ever had to ask, a) If I'm caught using this, will I be arrested? b) Is this application good for ten years in jail?

Having millions of students on the Napster network made sense because the more users there are on-line, the larger the lending library becomes. Users behind national firewalls cannot be so casual. Having millions of users on a network may be one thing, but only a fool would trust more than his or her closest friends when the consequences of entrapment are so high. Thus, carefree peer-to-peer networks are replaced by careful hacktivist-to-hacktivist (H2H) networks.

H2H networks are like nuclear families living in large communities. Everyone may live in the same area, but each family has its own home where the doors open, close, and lock. And occasionally, a family member will bring someone new home. Everyone will sit around the living room, and if all goes well, the guest will be shown the library, perhaps, and maybe even someone's bedroom. All of this is based on earned trust. H2H networks will operate along these lines, where families will share a space and grant permission to one another as well as to certain visitors. The greater the trust, the more permissions will be granted; and for guests visiting the home, trust will be earned incrementally.

This model is already in existence, more or less. Using the Internet to communicate between known and trusted computers is a fact of business life. Virtual Private Networks are used daily to communicate sensitive and proprietary data. The same can be done by taking elements of this model and marrying them to H2H network development. But saying is not doing, and even the best marriages can unravel and fail. It's important to realize these things are possible but have never been done before.

Building H2H networks is not just a matter of guessing at how particular technologies will respond under fire. Hackers must know what users in the field need. We have been telling anyone who will listen that hackers, grassroots activists, and other parties who care about Internet freedom and the growth of democracy must partner up and work together.

Hacktivismo has been working with Chinese hackers and human rights workers, and the collaboration has been both fruitful and energizing. Occasionally there are cultural conflicts, but this has nothing to do with where anyone was born, and everything to do with how people get things done. Hackers tend towards MIT professor Dave Clark's credo which states, "We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code." Trust will come as development partners begin working more closely and learning that we aren't so different as we appear at the surface.

Research and development is phase one. Then comes distribution. Hackers have never had a problem distributing software. If you write something worth running, it will end up in every corner of the globe, something else we've learned from experience.

Leveraging existing distribution channels with those of our partners will ensure that users who most need liberating software will get it. Some human rights organizations have vast e-mail databases that will become increasingly invaluable for raising awareness, and in some instances, act as a distribution layer. Other areas of co-operation are also possible, especially in translations for non-English users where documentation and re-skinning U.I.s [the process of replacing the user interface of an application from, say, English to Chinese, or Arabic, etc.] will take development to ever-wider usefulness.

Last, although certainly not least, we need to acknowledge the Chinese government for their unwitting contributions to Hacktivismo's work. After reverse engineering some of their fundamental technologies we've discovered a few cracks where the light might shine through. But it does raise the question: why are we put in the position of doing this work? With billions of dollars in government budgets at their disposal, when are the world's liberal democracies going to put some of their resources into opening up the Internet? We know they don't care about human rights policy when it conflicts with jobs at home; but what about international security? As Beijing continues to play the patriotism card domestically, a more open Internet could diffuse traditional xenophobia through greater one-on-one interaction on-line.

But until Western governments become engaged, the main challenge for hackers is to keep focused on the goal of liberating the Internet. We realize that, but for the grace of God, we could be sitting on the other side of the firewall. It's a sentiment that is being picked up, although it would be a lie to say that thousands of hackers want to get into the game.

Still, enough are beginning to take up this cause that we should be able to see results, if new partnerships hold. There's a new generation of freedom fighters, sitting behind computers, who believe that it can be done.

why black market entrepreneurs matter to the global economy

Wired | Not many people think of shantytowns, illegal street vendors, and unlicensed roadside hawkers as major economic players. But according to journalist Robert Neuwirth, that’s exactly what they’ve become. In his new book, Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy, Neuwirth points out that small, illegal, off-the-books businesses collectively account for trillions of dollars in commerce and employ fully half the world’s workers. Further, he says, these enterprises are critical sources of entrepreneurialism, innovation, and self-reliance. And the globe’s gray and black markets have grown during the international recession, adding jobs, increasing sales, and improving the lives of hundreds of millions. It’s time, Neuwirth says, for the developed world to wake up to what those who are working in the shadows of globalization have to offer. We asked him how these tiny enterprises got to be such big business.

Wired: You refer to the untaxed, unlicensed, and unregulated economies of the world as System D. What does that mean?

Robert Neuwirth:There’s a French word for someone who’s self-reliant or ingenious: débrouillard. This got sort of mutated in the postcolonial areas of Africa and the Caribbean to refer to the street economy, which is called l’économie de la débrouillardise—the self-reliance economy, or the DIY economy, if you will. I decided to use this term myself—shortening it to System D—because it’s a less pejorative way of referring to what has traditionally been called the informal economy or black market or even underground economy. I’m basically using the term to refer to all the economic activity that flies under the radar of government. So, unregistered, unregulated, untaxed, but not outright criminal—I don’t include gun-running, drugs, human trafficking, or things like that.
“There are the guys who sneak stuff out of the port. The guys who get it across the border. The truck loaders and unloaders. All working under the table.”

Wired: Certainly the people who make their living from illegal street stalls don’t see themselves as criminals.

Neuwirth: Not at all. They see themselves as supporting their family, hiring people, and putting their relatives through school—all without any help from the government or aid networks.

Wired: The sheer scale of System D is mind-blowing.

Neuwirth: Yeah. If you think of System D as having a collective GDP, it would be on the order of $10 trillion a year. That’s a very rough calculation, which is almost certainly on the low side. If System D were a country, it would have the second-largest economy on earth, after the United States.

Wired: And it’s growing?

Neuwirth: Absolutely. In most developing countries, it’s the only part of the economy that is growing. It has been growing every year for the past two decades while the legal economy has kind of stagnated.

Wired: Why?

Neuwirth: Because it’s based purely on unfettered entrepreneurialism. Law-abiding companies in the developing world often have to work through all sorts of red tape and corruption. The System D enterprises avoid all that. It’s also an economy based on providing things that the mass of people can afford—not on high prices and large profit margins. It grows simply because people have to keep consuming—they have to keep eating, they have to keep clothing themselves. And that’s unaffected by global downturns and upturns.

Wired: Why should we care?

Neuwirth: Half the workers of the world are part of System D. By 2020, that will be up to two-thirds. So, we’re talking about the majority of the people on the planet. In simple pragmatic terms, we’ve got to care about that. Fist tap Dale.

The Darknet Project: netroots activists dream of global mesh network

ArsTechnica | A group of Internet activists gathered last week in an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel to begin planning an ambitious project—they hope to overcome electronic surveillance and censorship by creating a whole new Internet. The group, which coordinates its efforts through the Reddit social networking site, calls its endeavor The Darknet Project (TDP).

The goal behind the project is to create a global darknet, a decentralized web of interconnected wireless mesh networks that operate independently of each other and the conventional internet. In a wireless mesh network, individual nodes can relay data for other nodes, ensuring that the routing of data remains robust as nodes on the network are added and removed. The idea behind TDP is that such a network would be resistant to censorship and shutdown because there would be no central point of control over the infrastructure.

"Basically, the goal of the darknet plan project is to create an alternative, more free internet through a global mesh network," explained a TDP organizer who goes by the Internet handle 'Wolfeater.' "To accomplish this, we will establish local meshes and connect them via current infrastructure until our infrastructure begins to reach other meshes."

TDP seems to have been influenced in part by an earlier unofficial effort launched by the Internet group Anonymous called Operation Mesh. The short-lived operation, which was conceived as a response to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and its potential impact on Internet infrastructure, called for supporters to create a parallel Internet of wireless mesh networks.

The idea is intriguing, but it poses major technical and logistical challenges, and it's hard to imagine that TDP will ever move beyond the conceptual stage. The group behind the effort is big on ideas but short on technical solutions for rolling out a practical implementation. During the IRC meeting, they struggled to coordinate a simple discussion about how to proceed with their agenda.

Still, despite TDP's dysfunctional organizational structure and lack of concrete strategy, their message seems to resonate with an audience on the Internet. And enthusiasm for mesh networks and decentralized Internet isn't isolated to the tinfoil hat crowd; serious government programs aim at producing similar technology. Earlier this year, the New York Times reported on a US government-funded program to create wireless mesh networks that could help dissidents circumvent political censorship in authoritarian countries.

As repressive governments continue to get better at thwarting circumvention of their censorship tools, dissidents will need more robust tools of their own to continue propagating information. The US State Department seems to view decentralized darknets as an important area of research for empowering free expression abroad.

A growing number of independent open source software projects have also emerged to fill the need for darknet technology. Many of these projects are backed by credible non-profit organizations and segments of the security research community. Such projects could find a useful ally in the TDP if they were to engage with the growing community and help mobilize its members in a constructive direction.

Unlike TDP, the original Operation Mesh coordinators had specific technologies in mind: they highlighted the I2P anonymous network layer software and the BATMAN ad-hoc wireless routing protocol as the best prospective candidates. Both projects are actively maintained and have modest communities, though the I2P website is currently down. Promising projects like Freenet develop software for building darknets on top of existing Internet infrastructure.

Another group that might benefit from broader community support is Serval, a project to create ad-hoc wireless mesh networks using regular smartphones. The group has recently developed a software prototype that runs on Android handsets. They are actively looking for volunteers to help test the software and participate in a number of other ways.

TDP members who are serious about fostering decentralized Internet infrastructure could meaningfully advance their goals by assisting any of the previously mentioned projects. The growing amount of popular grassroots support for Internet decentralization suggests that the momentum behind darknets is increasing. Fist tap Dale.

open-source online banking software

Cyclos | Cyclos is a project of the Dutch non profit organization STRO. Cyclos offers a complete on-line banking system with additional modules such as e-commerce and communication tools. Cyclos is currently available in ten languages and used worldwide by many organizations and communities. The Cyclos platform permits a de-centralization of banking services that can stimulate local trade and development. With the latest version it is possible to roll out mobile banking services using mobile channels such as SMS. Cyclos is published under the GPL (open source) license meaning that it can be downloaded for free and used at no cost.

The objective of the project is to develop open source complementary currency software that is easy to use and maintain, flexible, secure, and highly customizable. The Cyclos structure is entirely dynamic. This means that it is possible to 'build' a monetary system from scratch. Organizations that want a standard system can use the default database that comes with basic configurations and can be easily enhanced. Cyclos is used for mutual credit systems like LETS, Barter systems, administration of Micro credits, Time banks and backed currency systems such as a C3 (consumer and commerce circuit). Cyclos just started to be used as a back-end for mobile banking services in Africa, and various Universities are studying the possibility to use Cyclos as a campus payment system. Fist tap Dale.

web search by the people for the people...,

FSCONS: YaCy Demo from Michael Christen on Vimeo.

YaCy | YaCy is a free search engine that anyone can use to build a search portal for their intranet or to help search the public internet. When contributing to the world-wide peer network, the scale of YaCy is limited only by the number of users in the world and can index billions of web pages. It is fully decentralized, all users of the search engine network are equal, the network does not store user search requests and it is not possible for anyone to censor the content of the shared index. We want to achieve freedom of information through a free, distributed web search which is powered by the world's users.

Decentralization
Imagine if, rather than relying on the proprietary software of a large professional search engine operator, your search engine was run by many private computers which aren't under the control of any one company or individual. Well, that's what YaCy does! The resulting decentralized web search currently has about 1.4 billion documents in its index (and growing - download and install YaCy to help out!) and more than 600 peer operators contribute each month. About 130,000 search queries are performed with this network each day.

There are already several search networks based on YaCy: the two major networks are the 'freeworld' network (which is the default public network that you join when you load the standard installation of YaCy) and the Sciencenet of the Karlsruhe Institut of Technology which focuses on scientific content. Other YaCy networks exist as TOR hidden services, local intranet services and on WiFi networks too.
Installation is easy!

The installation takes only three minutes. Just download the release, decompress the package and run the start script. On linux you need OpenJDK6. You don't need to install external databases or a web server, everything is already included in YaCy. Fist tap Dale.

Occupy doesn't have a platform, Occupy IS a platform!

RCReader | The Occupy movement comes under frequent attack from the institutional Left (and, it goes without saying, from the liberal establishment) for not offering a clear list of official demands – for, in other words, not offering a platform.

But that criticism misses the point. Occupy doesn’t have a single platform, in the sense of a list of demands. But it is a platform – a collaborative platform, like a wiki. Occupy isn’t a unified movement with a single list of demands and an official leadership to state them. Rather, Occupy offers a toolkit and a brand name to a thousand different movements with their own agendas, their own goals, and their own demands – with only their hatred of Wall Street and the corporate state in common, and the Occupy brand as a source of strength and identity.

Although the ends are quite different, the model of organization is much like that of al-Qaeda: an essentially leaderless organization, a loose network of cells, each of which adopts the al-Qaeda brand or franchise for its own purposes. It’s a much more effective use of resources to provide a common platform and then let a thousand flowers bloom.

A conventional, hierarchical activist institution wastes enormous resources on administrative apparatus and endless negotiations just to get everyone on the same page before anyone can do anything.

A common platform allows any number of movements, made up of voluntary aggregations of individuals with shared goals, to build on it on a modular basis, and to act without waiting for permission from the headquarters of the One Big Movement. And whenever they do anything that seems to work well, any other node in the network can adopt that tactic as its own without asking anyone’s leave.

That’s why the glocal Occupy movement is throwing off innovations like a fission reaction throws off neutrons. If anything, it’s done so even more since the wave of shutdowns in the U.S. divorced it from occupation as a primary tactic and scattered its seeds to the wind.

But let’s go back a ways. The Pentagon Papers weren’t published pursuant to an official decision by a nationwide anti-war movement, and Woodward and Bernstein didn’t try to found a national political movement to impeach Nixon. In both cases, the immediate actors simply published the information, and allowed anyone who would to leverage that information. They thereby created a free platform that could be developed by any number of antiwar and anti-Nixon activists for their own ends.

Fast forward to Summer 2010. Julian Assange simply published the cable dump at Wikileaks. Every single activist movement that piggybacked on that platform, starting with the uprising in Tunisia, did so on its own initiative, making – its own judgment – the best use of the free, common platform offered by Assange. So it’s gone from Tunisia to Egypt, to the Arab Spring, to Madison, to the demonstrations in Britain and Spain and Greece, to Occupy Wall Street, and back out to the global Occupy movement in hundreds of cities around the world.

Now, with the Occupy movement (thanks to Bloomberg et. al) no longer wedded to occupying public squares, the wave of innovations seems to roll in on a weekly basis. First Occupy Our Homes, and now Occupy the Ports.

List of Active Occupy Encampments Across the Country – Now at 61

Video - the Occupy Movement celebrates 3 months and going.

FDL | Although the media has grown bored with the Occupy movement and are declaring it over, OccupySupply has verified the existence of 61 encampments across the country. We are listing them below, along with links to photos and videos that demonstrate what they look like today.

The FDL Membership Program now has 110 liaisons at over 70 occupations across the country who report back to us on the status of their occupations twice each week. That’s how we determine which occupations OccupySupply will send cold weather gear to every day.

OccupySuply shipped more stuff out last week alone than we did in the entire first month, and the demand is only increasing.

So we thought we’d try to drive a stake through the heart of the “Occupy is Dead” narrative by publishing our working list, which is consistently more up-to-date than any I’ve seen. These are occupations with encampments only — there are many, many more vibrant occupations that are doing tremendous community activism despite the lack of an encampment.

» Please consider donating $10 or more to help us continue to meet the demands of the now 70+ occupations we serve with the Occupy Supply fund. As always, 100% of your donations to the fund will go to purchase and distribute the supplies they need to make it through the winter and beyond.

1	Occupy Anchorage	Igloos!
2	Occupy Atlanta	Re-occupied Woodruff Park after the raid, stopped foreclosure this week.
3	Occupy Austin	Nice story in Daily Texan about OccupySupply helping them prepare for winter
4	Occupy Berkeley	90 tents
5	Occupy Birmingham	Marched with Alabama civic & religious leaders to protest state immigration law
6	Occupy Bloomington	Longest running occupation?
7	Occupy Boise	Highs in the 30s, lows in the teens, but hanging in there
8	Occupy Boulder	Working with city on permit
9	Occupy Buffalo	Just opened 2nd encampment
10	Occupy Cedar Rapids	Says they have a stable location through the winter
11	Occupy Chapel Hill	Expanding, building bridges with local congregations
12	Occupy Charlotte	Growing, now 30 tents
13	Occupy Claremont	City council may intervene, but police say they’re not breaking any laws
14	Occupy Cleveland	Recently worked with Youngstown & Ashtabula to encamp vs. foreclosure
15	Occupy Columbia SC	Won their court battle; judge says they can stay
16	Occupy Dover DE	Just celebrated their 1 month anniversary
17	Occupy Kstreet	Expanding to local black churches
18	Occupy Lancaster PA	Renewing the permit that expires January 1
19	Occupy Delaware	Won a ruling from a judge that recognized the tent city as a form of protected speech.
20	Occupy DesMoines	Launching Occupy the Caucus, urging people to vote “uncommitted”
21	Occupy Erie	Re-occupied the gazebo yesterday, looking good in OccupySupply
22	Occupy Eugene	City installed lights at request of campers, increasing budget to help homeless
23	Occupy Fairbanks	Yes, there’s an Occupy Fairbanks. No shit.
24	Occupy Freedom Plaza	Feed 140 people each day
25	Occupy FtWayne	Flash mob at the Glenbrook Mall last weekend reminding people to shop local
26	Occupy Gainesville	Organizing Florida occupations for upcoming FL legislative session
27	Occupy Harrisburg	Organizing around state redistricting
28	Occupy Houston	Celebrated International Migrants Day by protesting prison industrial complex
29	Occupy Huntsville AL	City gave them a spot
30	Occupy IowaCity	Mic checked Newt Gingrich last week
31	Occupy Lancaster PA	Holding toy and book drive for children of the community
32	Occupy Las Vegas	Protesting at auctions of foreclosed homes seized without paperwork
33	Occupy Lincoln	Tent town in Centennial Mall going strong
34	Occupy Little Rock	Built a geodesic dome
35	Occupy Madison	Recently had its first marriage proposal
36	Occupy Memphis	Held Saturday march to mark 1 year since Mohamed Bouazizi lit himself on fire in Tunisia
37	Occupy Miami	Just celebrated 2 month anniversary
38	Occupy Milwaukee	Immigration groups recently loaned them office space
39	Occupy Monterey	Holding a series of public community educational talks
40	Occupy Nashville	Getting tremendous community support
41	Occupy New Haven	On private property by agreement with managers
42	Occupy Newark	City recently lifted ban on overnight encampments
43	Occupy Norman OK	Just started this week
44	Occupy Orange County	Held a mock funeral for the Bill of Rights
45	Occupy Palm Beach	Protesting wealth inequality in rich neighborhoods
46	Occupy Phoenix	Demonstrating against Joe Arpaio’s tasering of Latino Marine vet that left him brain dead
47	Occupy Pittsburgh	Protesting the bilking of millions of dollars from schools & local govt at US Steel Tower
48	Occupy Providence	Approx. 60 overnight sleepers in Burnside Park
49	Occupy Raleigh	Property owner & city say they can stay
50	Occupy Sacramento	Recently occupied Clear Channel
51	Occupy Rochester	Just received AFL-CIO Rochester Labor Council’s Community Solidarity Award
52	Occupy San Jose	Just re-occupied this week
53	Occupy San Luis Obispo	Denied the use of tents but still staying each night
54	Occupy Syracuse	Recently erected a triple-walled Army surplus tent and plan to stay for the winter
55	Occupy Tacoma	Mic check to OccupySupply on Dec 15!
56	Occupy Talahassee	Will present objectives of Florida occupations to state legislature on January 10
57	Occupy Tampa	Set up last Saturday in Voice of Freedom Park
58	Occupy Trenton	Protesting Chris Christie’s charter school plan in Dept. of Ed offices
59	Occupy Tucson	One of the largest occupations still going
60	Occupy Walton OR	Small Oregon town trying to save their post office
61	Occupy Winnepeg	Say they are “not going anywhere”

open-source tactical evolution

PortlandOccupier | The Portland Occupation stumbled upon a tactical innovation regarding occupying public spaces. This evolution in tactics was spontaneous, and went unreported in the media. On December 3rd, we took a park and were driven out of it by riot police; that much made the news. What the media didn’t report is that we re-took the park later that same evening, and the police realized that it would be senseless to attempt to clear it again, so they packed up their military weaponry and left. Occupy Portland has developed a tactic to keep a park when the police decide to enforce an eviction.

The tactical evolution that evolved relies on two military tactics that are thousands of years old- the tactical superiority of light infantry over heavy infantry, and the tactical superiority of the retreat over the advance.

Heavy infantry is a group of soldiers marching in a column or a phalanx that are armed with weaponry for hand to hand, close quarters combat. Heavy infantry function as a unit, not individual soldiers. Their operational strength is dependent upon maintaining the integrity of that unit. Riot police are heavy infantry. They will always form a line and advance as a unit.

Light infantry are armed with ranged weapons for assault from a distance. Light infantry operate as individuals that are free to roam at a distance and fire upon the opposition with ranged weapons. Cops firing tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannons, bean bag rounds, etc. are light infantry. They remain to the rear of the phalanx of riot cops (heavy infantry) and depend upon the riot cops maintaining a secure front and flanks to provide them a secure area of operations.

Protesters function fluidly as either light or heavy infantry. Their mass, because it is lacking in organization, functions as a phalanx, having no flanks or rear. Lack of organization gives that mass the option of moving in whichever direction it feels like, at any given time. If protesters all move to the right, the entire group and supporting officers has to shift to that flank. While the protesters can retreat quickly, the police can only advance as fast as their light infantry, supporting staff can follow and maintain a secure rear (if the mass of protesters were to run to the next block over and quickly loop around to the rear of the riot cops, the organization of the cops would be reduced to chaos). If that police cannot assemble with a front to oppose protesters, they are useless. The integrity of that tactic is compromised, and unable to maintain internal organization, the cops revert to individuals engaging in acts of brutality, which eventually winds up on the evening news and they lose the battle regardless of whether they clear the park or not.

Because of the lack of organization in a crowd of protesters, light infantry cops firing tear gas, etc. has little effect because it just serves to disorganize a group that relies upon disorganization in the first place. All it really does is disorganize the riot cops, who then resort to brutality.

The lack of weaponry on the part of the protesters grants them the luxury of opposing riot cops at close quarters, or remaining at long range in a refusal to engage the heavy infantry riot police at all. They have the advantage of the retreat, they can quickly move away, or in any direction, and the heavy infantry riot cops lack the swiftness to respond.

So far, all the occupations have, in a grave tactical error, agreed to engage the riot cops when they march in to clear parks. This has been a show of bravado that has the tactical benefits of providing media coverage of the brutal methods of police and the benefit of draining the resources of the oppressor by forcing them to incur the expense of arresting and prosecuting people for trivial offenses. Fist tap Dale.

how do you do I, see you've met my, culture of competency....,

This is not critisism. I am picking up to stimulate myself whilst I look at the screen. I think one needs to level the playing field, if this phrase is too ominous, I'll use another sentence: A level playing field, say a baseball field has laws that I would imagine 99% of the people understand. Unfortunately, getting anywhere near law that the whole playing field, and stadium an analogous statement to represent the world itself understand is shrouded in 'World domination is bad, they try to control us, they are aliens, they are reptiles, they set up 9/11, etc etc etc etc.'

Whilst the East are more likely to believe in Mohammed than the West according to my television, and the West are more likely to believe in Jesus according to my television, for one thing I cannot see the moral ground being comprensible nor integrable, so we are not in a good position to set the Utopia into action as doing so now would still attract anarchy from a distant land who doesn't understand the workings.

For one, I am sure of the Chinese culture so much that they wouldn't disrespect the elderly as we would say that our governments are gentocracy. I am quite certain younger people have as many ridiculous ideas as older people, I would just further the point and note that different social classes will have varying ideas on such a thing as justice, some will say throw the transgressors all in a room, lock them up and throw away the key, cushy jails, four wall jails.

To my more debatable points, I do think that global trade isn't all that great, it sounds great to me sometimes, that I can ship a good 6000 miles away, but I feel sometimes the good would be better suited to serving a local need, rather than across seas and through borders.

Two things I'd like to go on about next to finalise the outro are: Honchos and economic bafflement.

I need honchos in the police and in the army protecting the country. I have to wonder the need of a PM if we already have Minister of Education, foreign policy and so on leading the front in their field. Just a question... Is the PM just a face? What if there were good ministers but a PM sabotaging good work? OK I am not saying the world is massively wrong to me personally, but if we, you, me never face up to the issues that we have, we will never solve them. All I can really close with, is I have some issues about poverty in the UK, the seemingly low interest in self sufficient trade and entrepreneurial spirit. I cannot rely on the government to do everything, I must make wave of change myself too.

how I stopped worrying and learned to love the OWS protests

The Colbert Report
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Rolling Stone | I have a confession to make. At first, I misunderstood Occupy Wall Street.

The first few times I went down to Zuccotti Park, I came away with mixed feelings. I loved the energy and was amazed by the obvious organic appeal of the movement, the way it was growing on its own. But my initial impression was that it would not be taken very seriously by the Citibanks and Goldman Sachs of the world. You could put 50,000 angry protesters on Wall Street, 100,000 even, and Lloyd Blankfein is probably not going to break a sweat. He knows he's not going to wake up tomorrow and see Cornel West or Richard Trumka running the Federal Reserve. He knows modern finance is a giant mechanical parasite that only an expert surgeon can remove. Yell and scream all you want, but he and his fellow financial Frankensteins are the only ones who know how to turn the machine off.

That's what I was thinking during the first few weeks of the protests. But I'm beginning to see another angle. Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance. It's about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything. This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become. If there is such a thing as going on strike from one's own culture, this is it. And by being so broad in scope and so elemental in its motivation, it's flown over the heads of many on both the right and the left.

The right-wing media wasted no time in cannon-blasting the movement with its usual idiotic clichés, casting Occupy Wall Street as a bunch of dirty hippies who should get a job and stop chewing up Mike Bloomberg's police overtime budget with their urban sleepovers. Just like they did a half-century ago, when the debate over the Vietnam War somehow stopped being about why we were brutally murdering millions of innocent Indochinese civilians and instead became a referendum on bralessness and long hair and flower-child rhetoric, the depraved flacks of the right-wing media have breezily blown off a generation of fraud and corruption and market-perverting bailouts, making the whole debate about the protesters themselves – their hygiene, their "envy" of the rich, their "hypocrisy."

The protesters, chirped Supreme Reichskank Ann Coulter, needed three things: "showers, jobs and a point." Her colleague Charles Krauthammer went so far as to label the protesters hypocrites for having iPhones. OWS, he said, is "Starbucks-sipping, Levi's-clad, iPhone-clutching protesters [denouncing] corporate America even as they weep for Steve Jobs, corporate titan, billionaire eight times over." Apparently, because Goldman and Citibank are corporations, no protester can ever consume a corporate product – not jeans, not cellphones and definitely not coffee – if he also wants to complain about tax money going to pay off some billionaire banker's bets against his own crappy mortgages.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the political spectrum, there were scads of progressive pundits like me who wrung our hands with worry that OWS was playing right into the hands of assholes like Krauthammer. Don't give them any ammunition! we counseled. Stay on message! Be specific! We were all playing the Rorschach-test game with OWS, trying to squint at it and see what we wanted to see in the movement. Viewed through the prism of our desire to make near-term, within-the-system changes, it was hard to see how skirmishing with cops in New York would help foreclosed-upon middle-class families in Jacksonville and San Diego.

What both sides missed is that OWS is tired of all of this. They don't care what we think they're about, or should be about. They just want something different.

We're all born wanting the freedom to imagine a better and more beautiful future. But modern America has become a place so drearily confining and predictable that it chokes the life out of that built-in desire. Everything from our pop culture to our economy to our politics feels oppressive and unresponsive. We see 10 million commercials a day, and every day is the same life-killing chase for money, money and more money; the only thing that changes from minute to minute is that every tick of the clock brings with it another space-age vendor dreaming up some new way to try to sell you something or reach into your pocket. The relentless sameness of the two-party political system is beginning to feel like a Jacob's Ladder nightmare with no end; we're entering another turn on the four-year merry-go-round, and the thought of having to try to get excited about yet another minor quadrennial shift in the direction of one or the other pole of alienating corporate full-of-shitness is enough to make anyone want to smash his own hand flat with a hammer.

If you think of it this way, Occupy Wall Street takes on another meaning. There's no better symbol of the gloom and psychological repression of modern America than the banking system, a huge heartless machine that attaches itself to you at an early age, and from which there is no escape. You fail to receive a few past-due notices about a $19 payment you missed on that TV you bought at Circuit City, and next thing you know a collector has filed a judgment against you for $3,000 in fees and interest. Or maybe you wake up one morning and your car is gone, legally repossessed by Vulture Inc., the debt-buying firm that bought your loan on the Internet from Chase for two cents on the dollar. This is why people hate Wall Street. They hate it because the banks have made life for ordinary people a vicious tightrope act; you slip anywhere along the way, it's 10,000 feet down into a vat of razor blades that you can never climb out of.

That, to me, is what Occupy Wall Street is addressing. People don't know exactly what they want, but as one friend of mine put it, they know one thing: FUCK THIS SHIT! We want something different: a different life, with different values, or at least a chance at different values.

OWS: meatworld instantiation of interweb communication styles?

Video - Bill Black addresses occupy LA.

WaPo | Ten years ago, the streets of Manhattan would be desolate on any given weekend, emptied of its bankers and lawyers. Not so, last Sunday.

Just outside the Fulton Street subway stop, the once-lonesome streets had a festival feel to them. Tourists packed the sidewalks, some headed to pay their respects at the newly opened 9/11 memorial. Others had a different destination in mind: Zuccotti Park, ground zero for Occupy Wall Street.

The urban campground is part sideshow, part adult playground, part protest and almost entirely an enigma to the media, the government and even to the protesters themselves. Just how this leaderless, unwieldy ship is steered — and where exactly it’s going — is something many of the protesters admit they don’t know.

After spending a day in the camp and watching the conversations of the protesters online, it struck me: The work-in-process aspect, while confusing to people outside the Occupy confines, doesn’t trouble those on the inside. In fact, some seem to embrace bewildering outsiders.

The “horizontal hierarchy,” as the group likes to call its leadership style, becomes more understandable when viewed through the prism of the Internet. The style of communication, decision-making and planning taking place in Zuccotti Park, and in Occupy protests across the country, mimics much of the way we have learned to talk to one another online. Although there have been signs of this altered communication style in earlier movements, such as the tea party, the Occupy protesters seem to have fully realized and implemented the lessons of a thousand message boards in a real-life community.

egyptians march from tahrir square in support of occupy oakland

boingboing | As they vowed earlier this week to do, Egyptian pro-democracy protesters marched from Tahrir square to the U.S. Embassy today to march in support of Occupy Oakland—and against police brutality witnessed in Oakland on Tuesday night, and commonly experienced in Egypt.

Above and below, photos from Egyptian blogger Mohammed Maree, who is there at the march live-tweeting. He is a journalist with Egytimes.org, a human rights activist, and a veterinarian. All photos in this post are his.

The larger demonstration back at Tahrir was about issues closer to home: Egyptians are demanding that the military transfer power quickly to a representative civilian government, after the death by torture of a 24-year-old political prisoner named Essam Ali Atta. As the Guardian reports, critics say his death proves that the junta is failing to dismantle Mubarak's brutal security apparatus:

Essam Ali Atta, a civilian serving a two-year jail term in Cairo's high-security Tora prison following his conviction in a military tribunal earlier this year for an apparently "common crime", was reportedly attacked by prison guards after trying to smuggle a mobile phone sim card into his cell. According to statements from other prisoners who witnessed the assault, Atta had large water hoses repeatedly forced into his mouth and anus on more than one occasion, causing severe internal bleeding. An officer then transferred Atta to a central Cairo hospital, but he died within an hour.

His funeral took place today. Follow live tweets from the memorial at #esamatta. Journalist Reem Abdellatif, who is there, tweets:

His sister just passed out screaming they took my brother from me. [photo]. The scene is devastating at the morgue #essamatta's mom and sister keep calling out to him like he's still alive. Essam was 24.

As some protesters noted, that is exactly the same age as Scott Olsen, the US vet injured at Occupy Oakland. They see both men as victims of state brutality.

help stop COICA 2.0

Video - President Obama urged repressive regimes around the world to stop censoring the Internet. But at the same time, the United States Congress is hatching a plan to censor the Internet here at home. A new bill being debated this week would instruct the Attorney General to create an Internet blacklist of sites that US Internet providers would be required to block

DemandProgress | Oppose PROTECT-IP Act: U.S. Government Wants To Censor Search Engines And Browsers Tell Congress to Kill COICA 2.0, the Internet Censorship Bill

UPDATE: Great news. We don't always see eye-to-eye with Google, but we're on the same team this time. Google CEO Eric Schmidt just came out swinging against PROTECT IP, saying, "I would be very, very careful if I were a government about arbitrarily [implementing] simple solutions to complex problems." And then he went even further. From the LA Times:

"If there is a law that requires DNSs, to do X and it's passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president of the United States and we disagree with it then we would still fight it," he said, according to the report. "If it's a request the answer is we wouldn't do it, if it's a discussion we wouldn't do it."

Big content is irate. The Motion Picture Association of America released a statement saying, "We’ve heard this ‘but the law doesn’t apply to me’ argument before – but usually, it comes from content thieves, not a Fortune 500 company. Google should know better."

ORIGINAL: We knew that members of Congress and their business allies were gearing up to pass a revised Internet Blacklist Bill -- which more than 325,000 Demand Progress members helped block last winter -- but we never expected it to be this atrocious. Last year's bill has been renamed the "PROTECT IP" Act and it is far worse than its predecessor. A summary of it is posted below.

Senators Leahy and Hatch pretended to weigh free speech concerns as they revised the bill. Instead, the new legislation would institute a China-like censorship regime in the United States, whereby the Department of Justice could force search engines, browsers, and service providers to block users' access to websites, and scrub the American Internet clean of any trace of their existence.

Furthermore, it wouldn't just be the Attorney General who could add sites to the blacklist, but the new bill would allow any copyright holder to get sites blacklisted -- sure to result in an explosion of dubious and confused orders.

Will you urge Congress to oppose the PROTECT IP Act? Just add your name at right.

PETITION TO CONGRESS: The PROTECT IP Act demonstrates an astounding lack of respect for Internet freedom and free speech rights. I urge you to oppose it.

brooklyn bridge arrests on bbcnews cut off

Video - BBCNews interview about Occupy Wallstreet protests

BBCNews | More than 700 people from the Occupy Wall Street protest movement have been arrested on New York's City's Brooklyn Bridge, police say.

They were part of a larger group crossing the bridge from Manhattan, where they have been camped out near Wall Street for two weeks.

Some entered the bridge's roadway and were met by a large police presence and detained, most for disorderly conduct.

The loosely-organised group is protesting against corporate greed.

They say they are defending 99% of the US population against the wealthiest 1%.

Occupy Wall Street called for 20,000 people to "flood into lower Manhattan" on 17 September and remain there for "a few months".

Several hundred remain camped at Zuccotti Park, a privately owned area of land not far from Wall Street.

A police spokesman quoted by Reuters said the arrests came "after multiple warnings by police were given to protesters to stay on the pedestrian walkway".

"Some complied and took the walkway without being arrested. Others locked arms and proceeded on the Brooklyn-bound vehicular roadway. The latter were arrested," the spokesman said.

Many were released again shortly afterwards, police said.

Some of the protesters said police had allowed them on to the roadway and were escorting them across when they were surrounded and the arrests began.

"This was not a protest against the NYPD. This was a protest of the 99% against the disproportionate power of the 1%," protester Robert Cammiso told the BBC.

"We are not anarchists. We are not hooligans. I am a 48-year-old man. The top 1% control 50% of the wealth in the USA."

Another protester, Henry-James Ferry, said: "It is not fair that our government supports large corporations rather than the people.

"I only heard about the protest on day one when I came across it. I then decided to go back every day," he told the BBC.
March on police HQ

The protesters have had previous run-ins with New York's police.

On Friday, about 2,000 people marched under the Occupy Wall Street banner to New York's police headquarters to protest against arrests and police behaviour.

Some 80 people were arrested during a march on 25 September, mostly for disorderly conduct and blocking traffic, but one person was charged with assaulting a police officer.

A series of other small-scale protests have also sprung up in other US cities in sympathy with the aims of Occupy Wall Street.

specious application of game mechanics...,

TechnologyReview | The world is in the midst of a gamification revolution—a mad dash to incorporate points, levels, and achievement badges into nearly every online and mobile experience. According to the hype, these "game mechanics" are a magic potion that can motivate anyone to do anything—purchase brand-name clothing, publicly share location information, or adopt healthy behaviors. Yet like many Internet revolutions, this one is tinged with irrational exuberance. Truly understanding what game mechanics can do requires significantly more nuance.

The intuitive idea is simple and appealing. Games are engaging, so making anything more gamelike should make it more engaging too. The scientific justification seems equally straightforward. Game mechanics invoke reinforcement learning; like B. F. Skinner's rats, we are repeatedly rewarded to produce the desired behavior.

Although behaviorist psychology is sound science, however, it is insufficient to justify gamification. Skinner's rats pressed a lever to get a morsel of food, and there is little debate about whether that constituted a reward. For human beings, what counts as a reward is much less clear. Points, levels, or badges are not inherently rewarding. The reward, when there is one, comes from underlying psychological phenomena such as social status, reputation, and group identification. Very little quality research has been done to show how game mechanics invoke these phenomena, and what the effects may be when they do.

When we look at game mechanics this way, it also becomes clear that they are unlikely to affect everyone in the same way. Some people actively seek status in the eyes of others, for example; other people are actually status-averse. Offering one-size-fits-all rewards may motivate certain people while putting others off. We need to understand more about the types of people who are motivated by specific gamelike rewards.

Another risk is that the extrinsic motivations supplied by game dynamics could crowd out motivations that are intrinsic to an activity. The most active Wikipedia editors, for example, are motivated by a shared investment in activities, interests, and beliefs that form a genuine connection among community members. The same is true in many online systems. Game dynamics, on the other hand, offer rewards that can be comparatively superficial and short-term. We know little about how gamification can undermine or support deeper, long-term motivation.

much too expensive, but at least a token step in the right direction...,

Video - Energy efficient home-building decathalon

USAToday | The California house looks like a pillow but has an iPad app to control window shades and 3-D cameras to adjust lighting based on movement inside.

The University of Maryland's "WaterShed" has a waterfall designed to control humidity, and Purdue University's "InHome" has a self-watering biowall with vertically arranged plants.

For New Zealand's vacation-style house, or "Kiwi bach," students sheared sheep and "stuffed (wool) in the walls" for insulation, says team member Nick Officer.

Welcome to the 2011 Solar Decathlon, a showcase of state-of-the-art green building by 19 of the world's most innovative academic teams. The biennial competition, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, opens to the public today for two weeks in Washington's West Potomac Park, near the National Mall.

The teams — 15 from the USA and one each from Canada, China, Belgium and New Zealand — are vying to see who built the most stylish, efficient and affordable solar-powered house.

Their prototypes, which the students designed and built during a two-year period, then reassembled within a week at the decathlon site, reflect rapid changes in technology.

Unlike the first decathlon in 2002 or even the last one in 2009, almost all of the houses now have smart meters or automation devices that track energy use in real time, plus triple-pane windows and LED (light emitting diode) fixtures.

"The shift has been pretty dramatic," says Fred Maxik, chief technology officer of Lighting Science Group, an LED manufacturer that donated lights to six of the homes. "Today, (LEDs) are ubiquitous."

The solar devices themselves have improved. They include a canopy of 42 bi-facial solar panels collecting sunlight from above and reflected light from below for Appalachian State University's house, and a rounded rooftop system for the University of Calgary entry.

Perhaps the biggest change this year is cost. DOE is emphasizing affordability and will subtract points for houses that cost more than $250,000. Each team accepted into the competition is given $100,000 in grants as start-up funding. DOE estimates each house's final price tag, based on a list of parts.

"It brings parity to the contest," says Richard King, decathlon director. "We don't want people buying it." In 2009, Team Germany won with an ultra-modern, cube-like house that King says cost about $800,000.

inside the trillion dollar underground economy

One of my favorite spots in the whole world!!!

Alternet | The United States continues to suffer from mass unemployment. People have had to adjust their lifestyles to the new reality—fewer jobs, lower wages, mortgages to pay that are now more than their homes are worth. Millions have dropped out of the job hunt and are trying to find other ways to sustain their families.

That's where the underground economy comes in. Also called the shadow or informal economy, it's not just illegal activity like selling drugs or doing sex work. It's all sorts of work that doesn't get regulated by the government or reported to the IRS, and it's a far bigger part of the economy than most of us are aware—in 2009, economics professor Friedrich Schneider estimated that it was nearly 8 percent of the US GDP, somewhere around $1 trillion. (That makes the shadow GDP bigger than the entire GDP of Turkey or Austria.) Schneider doesn’t include illegal activities in his count-- he studies legal production of goods and services that are outside of tax and labor laws. And that shadow economy is growing as regular jobs continue to be hard to come by—Schneider estimated 5 percent in '09 alone.

The Young Women's Empowerment Project [PDF] describes the “street economy” as “... any way that girls make cash money without paying taxes or having to show identification. Sometimes this means the sex trade. But other times it means braiding hair, babysitting, selling CDs/DVDs, drugs or other skills like sewing and laundry.”

D.A. Barber explained:

“This underground economy goes beyond the homeless collecting aluminum cans or clogging day labor halls. It includes the working poor getting cash for all forms of recycling: giving plasma, selling homemade tamales outside shopping plazas, holding yard sales, doing under-the-table work for friends and family, selling stuff at pawnshops, CD, book and used clothing stores, and even getting tips from restaurants and bars--to name a few.”

That means nearly all of us have participated in some way in the underground economy.

Yet little is known or discussed about this area of our lives, even though it touches many of us as we try to make ends meet.

handy little post-apocalyptic construction tip...,

Video - Solar lighting in otherwise dark 3rd world shacks

guild politics - proprietary or open source?

CAISO | New market participants - California’s changing energy landscape is creating new opportunities to participate in the ISO market. Renewable energy providers, transmission developers, demand response entities and cogeneration (combined-heat-and power) firms are finding our wholesale market is robust and accommodating.

The California ISO welcomes participation by new market participants. We are committed to making it easy for new customers to understand their participation options, which helps them make informed business decisions.

Scheduling coordinator
To participate in the ISO market you must be a certified scheduling coordinator (SC) or retain the services of a certified SC to act on your behalf.

Generation
The ISO provides open and non-discriminatory access to the transmission grid, which is supported by a competitive energy market for resources generating one megawatt or more.

Load
ISO market rules allow load and aggregation of loads capable of reducing their electric demand to participate as price responsive demand in the ancillary services market and as curtailable demand in real-time.

Metered subsystems
Electric utilities in existence prior to the start of ISO operations and inside its balancing authority can become metered subsystems and balance loads and resources within their territories.

Transmission
Transmission owners can elect to turn operational control of their facilities over to the ISO and collect access charges from users.

Utility distribution company
Utilities own the local distribution systems that take energy from the high voltage transmission system managed by the ISO to provide retail electric service to end-use customers.

Metering and telemetry
Settlement quality meter data collection and direct telemetry of participating resources are mandatory requirements for accurate revenue accounting and ISO operational visibility.

Market products
Participants seeking to provide ancillary services and participate in the congestion revenue rights and convergence bidding processes must meet specific requirements and complete the registration processes.

Application access
The ISO and its market participants must adhere to rigorous requirements to help ensure the integrity and confidentiality of commercially sensitive or proprietary information and data, as well as to protect the ISO grid and its assets.

Training
The ISO designs and offers training programs and courses to its customers that help them understand our market and processes. Fist tap and double dap to Brotherbrown and Arnach.