Thursday 10-06-11

Steven Paul Jobs, 1955-2011 Died today

Apple Co-Founder Transformed Technology, Media, Retailing And Built One of the World's Most Valuable Companies

Steven P. Jobs, the Apple Inc. chairman and co-founder who pioneered the personal-computer industry and changed the way people think about technology, died Wednesday at the age of 56.

His family, in a statement released by Apple, said Mr. Jobs "died peacefully today surrounded by his family."

The company didn't specify the cause of death. Mr. Jobs had battled pancreatic cancer and several years ago received a liver transplant. In August, Mr. Jobs stepped down as chief executive, handing the reins to longtime deputy Tim Cook.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304447804576410753210811910.html?mod=WSJ_Home_largeHeadline

Are the riots getting out of hand and how far could they go?

Occupy Wall Street protests grow in size and credibility (photos, video, live updates)

These are not the few bedraggled Occupy Wall Street protesters we knew in September.

Representatives from some of the most powerful labor unions in the country have arrived to march alongside the protesters, and students from New York universities joined the demonstrations this afternoon.

The protests today — which were expected to be the largest yet — began at 3 p.m. Eastern, when protesters in Zuccotti Square marched a mile north to Foley Square, met community and labor leaders, and then marched back at 4:30 p.m. The march was largely peaceful, and metal barriers and police kept the demonstrations from blocking traffic.

Many protesters carried signs or joined in chants about economic injustice, including: “Wall St. can't you see we want a fair economy!”

The reinforcements have added both size and credibility to the movement, which began Sept. 17 with a few dozen camped-out college students, and has voiced opposition against everything from corporate greed and bank foreclosures to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and unemployment. A full list of the protesters demands can be found here.

Among the labor unions that marched today are representatives of the Chinatown Tenants Union, the Transit Workers Union, MoveOn.org, Working Families Party, United NY. See a full list here.

The first union to throw support behind the protesters was Transport Workers Union Local 100. Alexander Hotz and Alice Brennan from The New York World asked members of the TWU what inspired them to join:

Unions join Wall Street protests from The New York World on Vimeo.

Students from Columbia, The New School, and NYU also walked out of their classes and marched to City Hall, before joining community and labor leaders in the protests.

Tevor Roulstin, center, 25, from Durango, Colo., stands with a sign at the Occupy Wall Street Protest as police confer on Wednesday at Zuccotti Park in New York. (Bebeto Matthews - AP) “We Are The 99 Percent,” a Tumblr that has sprung up alongside OccupyWall Street, has many students among the people who have posted photos of themselves holding handwritten signs to tell the stories of what’s wrong with America:

“i am a 19 year old student with 18 credit hours and 2 part time jobs. i am over 4000 dollars in debt but my paychecks are just enough to get me to school and back. next year my plan was to attend a 4 year college and get my bfa, but now i am afraid that without a co-signer i will have no shot at a loan and even if i can get a loan i am afraid that i will leave college with no future and a crippling debt.”

The blog, despite its grainy photos and calls for help — or perhaps in spite of them — has also given the movement a sense of legitimacy.

The movement has also spread to cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington. Gathering in McPherson Square in Washington this weekend, protesters told the Post they did not have a specific goal in mind:

As the movement continues to grow, politicians and celebrities alike have come out in support of the protesters.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told the Joint Economic Committee Tuesday that he understands the protesters' frustrations.

“I would just say very generally, I think people are quite unhappy with the state of the economy and what’s happening,” Bernanke said. “They blame, with some justification, the problems in the financial sector for getting us into this mess, and they’re dissatisfied with the policy response here in Washington. And at some level, I can’t blame them.”

Some protesters want to “End the Fed,” anyway:

This weekend, protesters were buoyed by a rumor that the band Radiohead would appear to play and support them. While the rumor turned out to be false, indie band Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum showed up instead and sang eight songs for the protesters:

The protests have also garnered support from Lupe Fiasco, Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Russ Feingold, and former White House adviser Van Jones, who suggested that the Wall Street protesters were the tea party-like movement liberals needed right now.

Occupy Wall Street is also being supported by hacktivist group Anonymous, which attacked a number of corporate and government Web sites this year. According to a video message posted on YouTube, Anonymous says it will support the protesters by erasing the New York Stock Exchange “from the Internet” on Oct. 10.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/occupy-wall-street-protests-grow-in-size-and-credibility-photos-video-live-updates/2011/10/05/gIQAIbD3NL_blog.html?hpid=z2

This one is across the water, but could ours escalate to this?

Police and rioters clash as nation goes on strike

Flights were grounded, schools shut and civic offices closed in a nationwide strike Wednesday to protest the government's austerity measures. Riot police in Athens clashed with protesters and fired tear gas. By Alexandra RENARD / Clovis CASALI / Matthieu MABIN special correspondents in Athens, Greece (video)
News Wires (text) AFP - Greek police tear-gassed protestors in central Athens on Wednesday as public sector staff and students went on strike over austerity cuts, shutting down courts, schools and transport including flights.

On Athens' central Syntagma Square outside the parliament building, police used tear gas to clear some of the 20,000 protestors, who included some 300 anarchists, after firebombs were thrown at them, an AFP reporter said.

At least two protesters were injured, the ambulance service said, in addition to an AFP photographer struck in the face by a riot policeman's shield as she took pictures of his colleagues hitting a demonstrator lying on the ground.

Another 10,000 people marched in the northern city of Thessaloniki.

The protests organised by the two main Greek unions, ADEDY and GSEE, came ahead of a general strike on October 19, which will also affect banks and shops.

It was called in response to new taxes, wage cuts and layoffs imposed by a government, fighting to avert a default on its debt payments, as the next installment of international aid hangs in the balance.

"Every time the public deficit gets bigger they impose new taxes, life is just getting too expensive," said Stavros and Helena, a married couple employed by the city of Athens.

"They should just put us on a boat and send us away," they told AFP.

"All workers must unite and coordinate their forces against this storm of measures that strike income and labour rights," ADEDY chairman Costas Tsikrikas told Flash Radio.

"If we don't resist we will lose everything," he said.

Interior Minister Haris Kastanidis said Greece must hold a referendum so the seemingly outraged public can vote on the government's response to the debt crisis.

There was a need, Kastanidis said, "for the Greek people, at this critical moment, to take a position on the fiscal problem."

He did not specify when such a call to the public would be made, or the exact phrasing of the question, but said, "it will not be an easy question, but a vital question."

Government spokesman Elias Mossialos later denied that a referendum was being planned.

Civil servants are protesting a plan to furlough some 30,000 employees, who will be on reduced pay for a year as they try to find other jobs.

The workers concerned already suffered sweeping wage cuts last year.

"Furlough equals layoffs," read a banner carried by municipal workers. Communist unions urged Greek to "organised resistance" as they marched on parliament.

The 24-hour walkout has shut down ministries, town halls, museums, schools and courtrooms, as well as flights in Greece. It also brought trains to a halt and hospitals were reduced to emergency staffing.

The labour plan, accompanied by downsizing at scores of state-owned companies, is designed to ease the state payroll as the government struggles to balance its bulging public deficit.

But there has been mounting criticism even within the ruling Socialist party.

"We have fallen behind in three crucial reform fields -- civil service wages, tax evasion and privatisations," former labour minister Louka Katseli told private television station Mega.

"We gave our (EU) peers an excuse to say that necessary reforms were not carried out in the summer," she said.

The additional austerity cuts are mandated by Greece's international creditors -- the EU, IMF and European Central Bank -- under an economic recovery programme launched last year in return for a 110-billion-euro ($149-billion) loan.

A high-level mission from the three organisations is currently conducting an audit of Greek finances and must sign off on the release of an eight-billion-euro loan installment next month.

Greece's state reserves to pay wages and pensions run out in November.

The country is trapped in a deepening recession and many Greeks point out that the cumulative cuts are only digging a deeper hole for the economy, which is expected to contract by 5.5 percent of output this year.

As the recession has repeatedly neutralised part of the sacrifices, there is concern that additional cutbacks to meet slipping fiscal targets are inevitable.

http://www.france24.com/en/20111005-greece-syntagma-square-athens-austerity-protest-strike-bailout


Way to broad, to be any good and way to broad to do a lot of damage.

NY State Senators Say We've Got Too Much Free Speech; Introduce Bill To Fix That

We've been pointing out a variety of attempts to push back on the First Amendment lately. One fertile ground for such attacks are local politicians carrying the "cyberbullying" banner, in various attempts to magically outlaw being a "jerk" online, usually by making it illegal to offend someone online. Of course, making someone's action illegal based on how someone else feels about it is all kinds of crazy. It also would seem to violate the very principles of the First Amendment, which bar Congress (and local governments) from passing any laws that take away one's right to free speech.

In the past, lawmakers pushing these laws have tended to simply ignore the First Amendment issue, and focus on screaming "protect the children!" as loudly as possible (never mind the fact that kids seem much less concerned about "bullying" than all these adults seem to think). However, it appears that some state Senators in NY are trying a new line of attack: going directly after the First Amendment and suggesting that current interpretations are way too broad, and it's not really meant to protect any sort of free speech right. In fact, it sounds as though they're trying to redefine the right to free speech into a privilege that can be taken away. Seriously:

Proponents of a more refined First Amendment argue that this freedom should be treated not as a right but as a privilege — a special entitlement granted by the state on a conditional basis that can be revoked if it is ever abused or maltreated.
Yes, that totally flips the First Amendment on its head. It is not a "more refined First Amendment." It's the anti-First Amendment. It suggests, by its very nature, that the government possesses the right to grant the "privilege" of free speech to citizens... and thus the right to revoke it. That's an astonishingly dangerous path, and one that should not be taken seriously. Of course, given their right to speak freely, state senators Jeff Klein, Diane Savino, David Carlucci and David Valesky have every right to put forth that argument -- but similarly, it allows others to point out their rather scary beliefs.

If you'd like to see the full report (pdf), I warn you that it is almost entirely written IN ALL CAPS (for no clear reason, there are a few chunks that revert to normal capitalization -- including a big chunk in the middle, that starts mid-section). I have no idea why so much of the paper is in ALL CAPS, but I'm kind of offended by it. Can we please remove their "privilege" to put out such things until they've learned to not maltreat capital letters?

The paper attempts to list out various examples of types of cyberstalking and cyberbullying -- some of which seem pretty ridiculous:
LEAVING IMPROPER MESSAGES ON ONLINE MESSAGE BOARDS OR SENDING HURTFUL AND DAMAGING MESSAGES TO OTHERS;
"Improper"? Seem a little broad to you? Does that mean the next person who comments here about something off-topic is a cyberbully?
“FLAMING” (HURTFUL, CRUEL, AND OFTENTIMES INTIMIDATING MESSAGES INTENDED TO INFLAME, INSIGHT, OR ENRAGE);
Whoo boy. An awful lot of you in the comments better watch out...
“HAPPY SLAPPING” (RECORDING PHYSICAL ASSAULTS ON MOBILE PHONES OR DIGITAL CAMERAS, THEN DISTRIBUTING THEM TO OTHERS);
Holy crap. 2005 wants its silly "crazy children" meme back. Yes, there were a few instances of this extremely brief "fad" that came and went in like a month half a decade ago. Then the next internet meme came along.
"TROLLING” (DELIBERATELY AND DECEITFULLY POSTING INFORMATION TO ENTICE GENUINELY HELPFUL PEOPLE TO RESPOND (OFTEN EMOTIONALLY), OFTEN DONE TO PROVOKE OTHERS);
Ooh, once again. Commenters beware.
EXCLUSION (INTENTIONALLY AND CRUELLY EXCLUDING SOMEONE FROM AN ONLINE GROUP).
Seriously? If we don't let you into the club, it's now a form of cyberbullying? It makes you wonder what happened to these particular Senators when they were kids.

The paper also attacks "anonymity," again ignoring how anonymity can often be extremely helpful to kids who wish to discuss things and ask questions without revealing who they are.

As for where they're going with this? Well, you guessed it: they're planning to introduce new laws to deal with cyberbullying (even though NY already has such a law). The plan is to extend two existing areas of law: "stalking in the third degree" will now include cyberbullying, and "manslaughter in the second degree" will be expanded to "include the emerging problem of bullycide."

This is basically a "Lori Drew" law. And it's ridiculous. If I say something to someone and they then go commit suicide, should I be guilty of manslaughter? Do the folks behind this not realize that this doesn't help prevent suicides, but it encourages them in giving people who are upset by something someone said extra incentive to kill themselves to "get back" at the person who was mean to them.

The cyberstalking part is no less ridiculous. It's ridiculously broad. It does not require that the person accused of cyberstalking initiate the activity, it does not require intent to harm or frighten, and a single message can be a cause of action. Think about that for a second. Someone could send you a message, you could do a single reply with no ill will or bad intent... and be guilty of the crime of cyberstalking. Damn. Do the folks writing this bill not realize how widely this will be abused?

Hopefully no one is so offended in reading such a dangerous proposal that they go out and commit suicide. At least be comforted in knowing that it won't allow for the authors to be accused of manslaughter until after the bill passes.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111001/00002316160/ny-state-senators-say-weve-got-too-much-free-speech-introduce-bill-to-fix-that.shtml