I've always been confused by hording dollars to offshore (or Swiss) accounts to avoid taxes, etc. How can it work. You're taxed on the money you make from your paycheck.
I'm not an expert on offshore banking, but I'm pretty sure that if you're drawing a paycheck, you're probably not a candidate.
However, if you have a large income strictly in cash (10s, 20, 50s, 100s), once you find a way to get that cash overseas, without federal knowledge (aka money laundering), you can then safely deposit in your offshore bank account.
There are other situations I can imagine. I'll give your company this contract, at this price, but you have to sweeten the pot with a deposit in this foreign account, and for your own sake you better draw it out of a unaccountable fund (hush fund), maybe lots of petty cash withdrawals, some funky depreciation schedules, oddly priced sales of new equipment, etc.
To use the Cryptonomicon example, a Taiwanese clone maker solds thousands of PC's with unlicensed MW software. All the profits were lost apparently (a good accountant can do this, I know a little of accounting practices, and it seems like fiction writing at times), but they could have ended up in an offshore bank.
In short, if you're a working stiff pulling down a weekly or monthly salary, there isn't much advantage to an offshore bank. If you're a drug dealer/smuggler or high placed government or corporate official, you might have need of sucha thing.
George
The Earth is not a closed control volume
on
Darwin's Radio
·
· Score: 3
I think maybe you might reliese evolution as a theory is majorly flawed. Just read and understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics.. and you might see why.. this is why i cant understand why authors persist to promote this bad science in their works... oh when will it end.
Hey AC, the Second Law of Thermodynamics does not apply to evolution because the Earth is not a closed control volume, you have scads of energy pouring in from the Sun, a far lesser amount emanating from the Earth, matter falling on the Earth and a far lesser amount leaving the Earth.
The Earth and the Sun taken together as one control volume are closer to a closed system. The increasing complexity of life on the Earth is more than balanced by the increasing entropy on the sun, and soon (universally speaking) when all the hydrogen on the sun is gone and it swells into a red giant, we'll see that.
Do you know anything about thermodynamics besides what you parrot of web pages? My qualifications come from several thermo courses I passed to get my BS in Aerospace Engineering.
George
Re:"Science Fiction" is an inherent contradiction
on
Darwin's Radio
·
· Score: 2
So, do you consider "Romantic Fiction" to be an inherent contradiction too, simply because it doesn't take you out to dinner and send you flowers?:-)
I don't want Romantic Fiction to take me out to dinner and buy me flower, I want it to crack Microsoft for me.
George
Let's get rid of all literary genres
on
Darwin's Radio
·
· Score: 2
I mean really, what I consider a romance and what some unfulfilled housefrau considers a romance are two different things.
What I consider fantasy, some people interpret as religious truth, and vice versa.
And let's get rid of that pesky Dewey Decimal system, classifications are bad.
And let's get rid of book titles too, since they can be misleading. An author can name his book just about anything she or he wants, it doesn't necessarily have to relate to the book matter in the way I think it does.
So we'll end up with a huge mass of undifferentiated, unorganized texts, but we won't offend anyone.
Please Chris, I understand that "hard science fiction" may break the rules of physics, but it is fiction after all, and as a science fiction reader I appreciate the way the genre is divided into hard, cyberpunk, soft, fantasy, alternate history, etc. It makes it easier for me to find a book that I will enjoy, and avoid the sub-genres that I don't like.
There are not fights several times a week and a few murders a year in each school. Those statistics are for larger areas. There is about 1 fight a year in my school and never a murder.
I'm glad for you, but I'm talking about the Rochester, New York, City Schools. There are fights in the schools, there are murders every few years there, though mercifully it has been about 3 or 4 if I recall since the last one.
You make a good point PhilosopherKing, can you give some links to occasions where people went berserk and killed people with clubs and shivs (and The Cryponomicon doesn't count).
There are a lot of deeper problems, single family homes, poverty, lack of love (the murdering girl in question was afraid the victim was stealing her boyfriend).
Even if people are just EVIL, how do you propose you find them and lock them up? Maybe someone somewhere can take a look at previously diagnosed EVIL people, right some profiling software to determine if a threatening person is EVIL,...
Statistically your home is far more likely to be the site of a fight or murder than your childs school. IT hasn't happened yet, just as the people being tested have not YET done anything violent. But it MIGHT, so shouldn't you let the government put armed guards in your house JUST IN CASE?
Really?
Where did you get statistics comparing the rates of violence and murder in an inner city high school versus a white, middle class home with two parents and no guns?
Or are you comparing all schools (including placid suburban schools) and all households (including those with single parents, guns, substance abuse, etc).
I have no problem with metal detectors in places where they are appropriate.
This is my point!
The city high schools my daughter will attend are unfortunately dangerous, a short term band aid is metal detectors, a longer term one is reducing the poverty in the city.
Does laetus have kids? Where does he/she send the school if he/she does?
First off I don't know if this Mosaic thing is good or bad since no one knows how it works and what criteria it uses.
You can get a good idea how it works by looking at the web page, http://www.mosaic2000.com, but that takes work.
Ok granted metal detecters can be useful but what he is saying is that when our kids grow older they will no longer feel threatened by their loss of privacy.
This is a valid point, don't I have the option of telling my daughter "metal detectors are a necessary evil, they infringe on your privacy but I think the deterrent affect they provide is more important"?
I am married and we are planning children. I for one do not want my children to become mindless cows not aware of the killing hammer behing the next turn.
Good for you, remember this conversation when your children go off to school, and think if you want your 12 year old to be a foot soldier in the war against metal detectors, or if you prefer him/her to grow up first and then decide his/her own fate.
Well, I for one will teach my daughter not be a mindless cow. I'll tell her why her school has metal detectors and why I'm in favor of them, why we have a large dog, why someone took her pumpkin from the garden, etc.
How does being in favor of metal detectors in schools make me a mindless cow? Is it the same as being in favor of DWI laws make me a humorless prude?
So you have no problems with your kid setting off the metal detector because she has a house key in her pocket and having armed guards rummage thru her backpack, purse, pockets, etc.? Your daughter will probably grow up to be a good little sheep. Or a rebel, and who could blame her?
Don't I have the choice of telling my daughter how to get through a metal detector without setting one off?
"Put your keys in the plastic bin, walk through the detector, pick up your keys."
In a similar vein:
"Drive just over the speed limit, don't drive erratically, don't run red lights, and you won't get pulled over, since you're white. You can even drive with 1/4 oz of marijuana and never be picked up."
"Don't smoke a joint in front of a police office, unless you want to get arrested for a political statement."
It's not a question of freedoms in this case, it's a question of "learning environment". Why don't you have armed guards in your house, mandated by the government? You'd be much safer, and it wouldn't be impinging on your freedoms, would it?
If several times a week there were fights and violence in my house and a murder every few years, and I didn't want to get caught up in that, yeah, I might consider armed guards in my house.
I'm thinking metal detectors with unarmed guards is silly, anybody wanting to do a Gotterdammerung on their school wouldn't be deterred by a stern glance and a warning beep.
I suppose the proper solution is to chicken out and move to the suburbs, where student on student violence doesn't occur (I'm being sarcastic, I live in the city, and I think Columbine,etc showed that the cities don't have a monopolyon violence).
The kid killing kid that I referred to used a knife. If the 12 year old had known she had to walk through a metal detector to get to school, maybe she wouldn't have carried a knife.
The list: armed guards at school entrances, hallways, etc., metal detectors,...
Speaking as a parent who will be sending his daughter to a school district where kids have killed kids, I'm fine with metal detectors and armed guards.
What freedoms do metal detectors restrict? The freedom to bring a crowbar to school in your backpack, just in case you need to pry open an air vent?
I also had to pass through a metal detector when I did jury duty, and when I went to the airport. I don't feel particularly threatened or impinged, or even less free.
What freedoms do armed guards restrict? I just hope they're better shots than the Columbine wusses.
I believe it's titled "And Then There Were None" about what happens when a coercive militaristic starship lands on a planet settled by followers of Ghandhi.
If this "Mosaic" software asks questions like "Do you spend more than 15 minutes a day on the Internet?", "Do you use IRC, MUDs, or chat rooms on a daily basis?" and uses the answers to those questions to judge whether or not a kid could be potential "trouble", that's a Very Bad Thing.
It doesn't.
Students will probably never see Mosaic, it's for administrators.
From the NYTimes and Gavin De Beckers's web site it asks questions like:
What kind of access to firearms does the student have?
__No known possession of a firearm __Friends known to have ready access to a firearm __There are firearms in the home __There are firearms in a home frequented by the student __The student owns his own firearm __The student recently acquired a firearm
I'm guessing from the context of the web site, but if student Joe Geek was just dumped by his girlfriend and he sent her a threatening invitation to the prom (ala Go with me or it will be an unforgettable Prom, and your last prom!) and Joe Geek just bought a gun, maybe Mosaic-2000 will flag him.
Dr. McGee had over 60 categories of information on classroom shooters and about 80 inclusionary and exclusionary criteria, arrayed in spreadsheets and tables. And here was where he caught me. As the slides displaying this information commenced flashing on the big screen at the front of the darkened auditorium, I began noticing an eerie congruence between his profile of the school shooter type, and the actual traits of the boy who had murdered my son... member of alienated group; appearance of normality to adults; negative self-image and unstable self esteem; average to above average IQ; covert vandalism and dishonesty; distrustful and secretive with adults in authority; interest in real and fictional violence in the media; motive vengeance and achievement of power; mixed personality disorder with paranoid, antisocial and narcissistic features... the list went on. The fit was uncanny. McGee told us, for example, how in their fantasies, school shooters pre-select victims, witnesses, time, place, location, means and course of action. I recalled testimony from the criminal trial to the effect that my son's killer had repeatedly and publicly rehearsed his fantasy of shooting up the dining hall at the evening meal.
And this interesting characteristic:
These kids were middle class male Caucasians averaging 16 years of age, who felt socially isolated and who had ready access to guns. Other kinds of information were surprising. These kids were NOT drug addicts or alcohol abusers, and they had no documented history of severe mental illness. Aside from an occasional preference for dark or camouflage clothing, they presented a normal appearance to adults. They were not pierced, tattooed scary looking kids, and they were not high-profile trouble makers. They were, generally, of above average intelligence.
Hmmm, can we categorize these as geek or goth characteristics?
characteristic geek goth
alienated group maybe maybe
appearance of normality to adults maybe no
negative self-image and unstable self esteem* maybe maybe
average to above average IQ presumable maybe
covert vandalism and dishonesty** maybe maybe
distrustful and secretive with adults in authority maybe maybe
interest in real and fictional violence in the media *** maybe maybe
motive vengeance and achievement of power no no
mixed personality disorder with paranoid no no
ready access to guns no no
* this sounds like a typical adolescent, GH ** does cracking count? *** does AP history count?
You can make almost any adolescent fit these characteristics, but maybe in summation they mean something.
You'll notice a lack of computers in the mix, too.
I had to fudge some of the Goth stuff, not really knowing any Goths anymore.
Another thing the publisher can't do (in the U.S. at least) is prevent somebody from recording a cover version of a song the publisher owns. Usually the would-be cover artist and the publisher work out a deal on royalties. However, if negotiations fail, U.S. law allows the cover artist to make and market the recording anyway provided he pays a stipulated (and fairly stiff) royalty to the publisher.
Would the Dead Kennedys be able to produce a sharply modified Phish satire album?
If the Dead Kennedy's were still around, I'm sure they could, you just described Weird Al's career.
Not that anybody would want to listen to yet another band similar to Phish, but the whole myth of "open source" and Phish is, umm, a myth.
You're not thinking of it in the right way. It's not Open Source as in you get the lyrics and tabs, and can recreate the songs anyway you want to, and call it Phish, it's Open Source as in you can freely trade the live recordings. Maybe GPL music is closer to the true meaning.
Many bands do not allow audience taping, and attempt to prosecute people trading unauthorized recordings. This may be due to record company pressure, but the idea is "Only we can determine what music of ours you can listen to, if we haven't gone over the music and approved it, you aren't supposed to listen to it."
Phish (and more originally, though not the first, the Grateful Dead) feel that the fans should be free to tape a live concert, and once they are done playing a concert live, the fans are free to trade these live concerts for other live concerts, as long as no profit is involved. Perhaps a better way to describe this is as "Open Source distribution."
Yes, "Open Source distribution". If I don't like the quality of a CDR I get from MZ, I'm free to look for a CDR from TB, JT, or AJ, and never deal with MZ again. If I want to accumulate 400 hours of live Dead without paying a cent to the Grateful Dead organization (or 400 hours of Phish to the Phish organization), I'm free to do so.
However, if I recall my history correctly, the Protestant "revolution" was as much a revolution as a rebellion. A rebellion against what? why, against the then-current religion. So you see, at _that point in time_, technology (freedom) and religion *did not get along*.
But it was a *religious rebellion*!
The Protestant revolution wasn't saying religion is bad, God is bad.
It was saying you don't need this huge structure to interface with God, you can do it yourself (hence my Open Source allusion).
At that point in time, technology and a dominant religion did not get along, but a new religion was certainly using technology for all it could.
Crusades: You have to plan and implement a system of genocide, attempting to exterminate people who don't believe in your God.
I kind of implied it by saying infidels (who also consider them their Holy Lands).
Spanish Inquisition: You have to root out and torture people with large land holdings who refuse to 'donate' those holdings to the church.
Yeah, but nobody expects a game about the Spanish Inquisition.
More seriously, I was trying to describe scenarios that would be fun, and not too tasteless. You don't play Panzer General and get extra points for razing the Warsaw Ghetto, or capturing Jews, you play for the military interest, though you can't deny such atrocities are a result of the actions in Panzer General.
Okay, tasteless Christian games, you are warned.
Golgotha: Two player game, one mocks and beats Christ as he carries the cross and dies on the cross, the other plays Christ, extra points for dying beatifically.
Witch, witch: Kill any strange or non docile women in Salem.
Abortionist-Hunter: Hunt the wily abortionist with a sniper scope. Reverberates with today's headlines (RIP Bernard Slepian).
Stone the adulteress: Throw stones at the adulteress, try no to hit the do gooders.
Slashdot Mirror
I've always been confused by hording dollars to offshore (or Swiss) accounts to avoid taxes, etc. How can it work. You're taxed on the money you make from your paycheck.
I'm not an expert on offshore banking, but I'm pretty sure that if you're drawing a paycheck, you're probably not a candidate.
However, if you have a large income strictly in cash (10s, 20, 50s, 100s), once you find a way to get that cash overseas, without federal knowledge (aka money laundering), you can then safely deposit in your offshore bank account.
There are other situations I can imagine. I'll give your company this contract, at this price, but you have to sweeten the pot with a deposit in this foreign account, and for your own sake you better draw it out of a unaccountable fund (hush fund), maybe lots of petty cash withdrawals, some funky depreciation schedules, oddly priced sales of new equipment, etc.
To use the Cryptonomicon example, a Taiwanese clone maker solds thousands of PC's with unlicensed MW software. All the profits were lost apparently (a good accountant can do this, I know a little of accounting practices, and it seems like fiction writing at times), but they could have ended up in an offshore bank.
In short, if you're a working stiff pulling down a weekly or monthly salary, there isn't much advantage to an offshore bank. If you're a drug dealer/smuggler or high placed government or corporate official, you might have need of sucha thing.
George
I think maybe you might reliese evolution as a theory is majorly flawed. Just read and understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics.. and you might see why.. this is why i cant understand why authors persist to promote this bad science in their works... oh when will it end.
Hey AC, the Second Law of Thermodynamics does not apply to evolution because the Earth is not a closed control volume, you have scads of energy pouring in from the Sun, a far lesser amount emanating from the Earth, matter falling on the Earth and a far lesser amount leaving the Earth.
The Earth and the Sun taken together as one control volume are closer to a closed system. The increasing complexity of life on the Earth is more than balanced by the increasing entropy on the sun, and soon (universally speaking) when all the hydrogen on the sun is gone and it swells into a red giant, we'll see that.
Do you know anything about thermodynamics besides what you parrot of web pages? My qualifications come from several thermo courses I passed to get my BS in Aerospace Engineering.
George
So, do you consider "Romantic Fiction" to be an inherent contradiction too, simply because it doesn't take you out to dinner and send you flowers? :-)
I don't want Romantic Fiction to take me out to dinner and buy me flower, I want it to crack Microsoft for me.
George
I mean really, what I consider a romance and what some unfulfilled housefrau considers a romance are two different things.
What I consider fantasy, some people interpret as religious truth, and vice versa.
And let's get rid of that pesky Dewey Decimal system, classifications are bad.
And let's get rid of book titles too, since they can be misleading. An author can name his book just about anything she or he wants, it doesn't necessarily have to relate to the book matter in the way I think it does.
So we'll end up with a huge mass of undifferentiated, unorganized texts, but we won't offend anyone.
Please Chris, I understand that "hard science fiction" may break the rules of physics, but it is fiction after all, and as a science fiction reader I appreciate the way the genre is divided into hard, cyberpunk, soft, fantasy, alternate history, etc. It makes it easier for me to find a book that I will enjoy, and avoid the sub-genres that I don't like.
Thanks,
George
you need a moving van.
That's called white-flight, and leads to sprawl.
I like the city, I like the older houses, I like living in the cities, I'd rather stay here and work to make the schools better.
Anyhow, the point of Columbine and that school in Georgia was that "even nice, upper middle class white suburbs are not safe anymore."
George
There are not fights several times a week and a few murders a year in each school. Those statistics are for larger areas. There is about 1 fight a year in my school and never a murder.
I'm glad for you, but I'm talking about the Rochester, New York, City Schools. There are fights in the schools, there are murders every few years there, though mercifully it has been about 3 or 4 if I recall since the last one.
George
You make a good point PhilosopherKing, can you give some links to occasions where people went berserk and killed people with clubs and shivs (and The Cryponomicon doesn't count).
...
There are a lot of deeper problems, single family homes, poverty, lack of love (the murdering girl in question was afraid the victim was stealing her boyfriend).
Even if people are just EVIL, how do you propose you find them and lock them up? Maybe someone somewhere can take a look at previously diagnosed EVIL people, right some profiling software to determine if a threatening person is EVIL,
oops, never mind, Katz will get mad at me.
George
Statistically your home is far more likely to be the site of a fight or murder than your childs school. IT hasn't happened yet, just as the people being tested have not YET done anything violent. But it MIGHT, so shouldn't you let the government put armed guards in your house JUST IN CASE?
Really?
Where did you get statistics comparing the rates of violence and murder in an inner city high school versus a white, middle class home with two parents and no guns?
Or are you comparing all schools (including placid suburban schools) and all households (including those with single parents, guns, substance abuse, etc).
George
I have no problem with metal detectors in places where they are appropriate.
This is my point!
The city high schools my daughter will attend are unfortunately dangerous, a short term band aid is metal detectors, a longer term one is reducing the poverty in the city.
Does laetus have kids? Where does he/she send the school if he/she does?
George
First off I don't know if this Mosaic thing is good or bad since no one knows how it works and what criteria it uses.
You can get a good idea how it works by looking at the web page, http://www.mosaic2000.com, but that takes work.
Ok granted metal detecters can be useful but what he is saying is that when our kids grow older they will no longer feel threatened by their loss of privacy.
This is a valid point, don't I have the option of telling my daughter "metal detectors are a necessary evil, they infringe on your privacy but I think the deterrent affect they provide is more important"?
I am married and we are planning children. I for one do not want my children to become mindless cows not aware of the killing hammer behing the next turn.
Good for you, remember this conversation when your children go off to school, and think if you want your 12 year old to be a foot soldier in the war against metal detectors, or if you prefer him/her to grow up first and then decide his/her own fate.
Well, I for one will teach my daughter not be a mindless cow. I'll tell her why her school has metal detectors and why I'm in favor of them, why we have a large dog, why someone took her pumpkin from the garden, etc.
How does being in favor of metal detectors in schools make me a mindless cow? Is it the same as being in favor of DWI laws make me a humorless prude?
George
So you have no problems with your kid setting off the metal detector because she has a house key in her pocket and having armed guards rummage thru her backpack, purse, pockets, etc.? Your daughter will probably grow up to be a good little sheep. Or a rebel, and who could blame her?
Don't I have the choice of telling my daughter how to get through a metal detector without setting one off?
"Put your keys in the plastic bin, walk through the detector, pick up your keys."
In a similar vein:
"Drive just over the speed limit, don't drive erratically, don't run red lights, and you won't get pulled over, since you're white. You can even drive with 1/4 oz of marijuana and never be picked up."
"Don't smoke a joint in front of a police office, unless you want to get arrested for a political statement."
It's not a question of freedoms in this case, it's a question of "learning environment". Why don't you have armed guards in your house, mandated by the government? You'd be much safer, and it wouldn't be impinging on your freedoms, would it?
If several times a week there were fights and violence in my house and a murder every few years, and I didn't want to get caught up in that, yeah, I might consider armed guards in my house.
I'm thinking metal detectors with unarmed guards is silly, anybody wanting to do a Gotterdammerung on their school wouldn't be deterred by a stern glance and a warning beep.
I suppose the proper solution is to chicken out and move to the suburbs, where student on student violence doesn't occur (I'm being sarcastic, I live in the city, and I think Columbine,etc showed that the cities don't have a monopolyon violence).
George
How about the right to carry a pocket knife?
The kid killing kid that I referred to used a knife. If the 12 year old had known she had to walk through a metal detector to get to school, maybe she wouldn't have carried a knife.
George
The list: ...
armed guards at school entrances, hallways, etc.,
metal detectors,
Speaking as a parent who will be sending his daughter to a school district where kids have killed kids, I'm fine with metal detectors and armed guards.
What freedoms do metal detectors restrict? The freedom to bring a crowbar to school in your backpack, just in case you need to pry open an air vent?
I also had to pass through a metal detector when I did jury duty, and when I went to the airport. I don't feel particularly threatened or impinged, or even less free.
What freedoms do armed guards restrict? I just hope they're better shots than the Columbine wusses.
George
I believe it's titled "And Then There Were None" about what happens when a coercive militaristic starship lands on a planet settled by followers of Ghandhi.
Useful abbreviations from the story:
myob: mind your own business
fiw: freedom, I won't
off topic, too.
George
and I really should use the preview button, sorry.
George
If this "Mosaic" software asks questions like "Do you spend more than 15 minutes a day on the Internet?", "Do you use IRC, MUDs, or chat rooms on a daily basis?" and uses the answers to those questions to judge whether or not a kid could be potential "trouble", that's a Very Bad Thing.
It doesn't.
Students will probably never see Mosaic, it's for administrators.
From the NYTimes and Gavin De Beckers's web site it asks questions like:
What kind of access to firearms does the student have?
__No known possession of a firearm
__Friends known to have ready access to a firearm
__There are firearms in the home
__There are firearms in a home frequented by the student
__The student owns his own firearm
__The student recently acquired a firearm
I'm guessing from the context of the web site, but if student Joe Geek was just dumped by his girlfriend and he sent her a threatening invitation to the prom (ala Go with me or it will be an unforgettable Prom, and your last prom!) and Joe Geek just bought a gun, maybe Mosaic-2000 will flag him.
George
Novel concept, I went to Gavin De Becker's web site and from this article> I found a list of profiling characteristics.
Dr. McGee had over 60 categories of information on classroom shooters and about 80 inclusionary and exclusionary criteria, arrayed in spreadsheets and tables. And here was where he caught me. As the slides displaying this information commenced flashing on the big screen at the front of the darkened auditorium, I began noticing an eerie congruence between his profile of the school shooter type, and the actual traits of the boy who had murdered my son... member of alienated group; appearance of normality to adults; negative self-image and unstable self esteem; average to above average IQ; covert vandalism and dishonesty; distrustful and secretive with adults in authority; interest in real and fictional violence in the media; motive vengeance and achievement of power; mixed personality disorder with paranoid, antisocial and narcissistic features... the list went on. The fit was uncanny. McGee told us, for example, how in their fantasies, school shooters pre-select victims, witnesses, time, place, location, means and course of action. I recalled testimony from the criminal trial to the effect that my son's killer had repeatedly and publicly rehearsed his fantasy of shooting up the dining hall at the evening meal.
And this interesting characteristic:
These kids were middle class male Caucasians averaging 16 years of age, who felt socially isolated and who had ready access to guns. Other kinds of information were surprising. These kids were NOT drug addicts or alcohol abusers, and they had no documented history of severe mental illness. Aside from an occasional preference for dark or camouflage clothing, they presented a normal appearance to adults. They were not pierced, tattooed scary looking kids, and they were not high-profile trouble makers. They were, generally, of above average intelligence.
Hmmm, can we categorize these as geek or goth characteristics?
characteristic geek goth
alienated group maybe maybe
appearance of
normality to adults maybe no
negative self-image
and unstable self
esteem* maybe maybe
average to above
average IQ presumable maybe
covert vandalism and
dishonesty** maybe maybe
distrustful and secretive with
adults in authority maybe maybe
interest in real and fictional violence
in the media *** maybe maybe
motive vengeance and achievement
of power no no
mixed personality disorder
with paranoid no no
ready access to guns no no
* this sounds like a typical adolescent, GH
** does cracking count?
*** does AP history count?
You can make almost any adolescent fit these characteristics, but maybe in summation they mean something.
You'll notice a lack of computers in the mix, too.
I had to fudge some of the Goth stuff, not really knowing any Goths anymore.
George
I found a working lijnk, and saved $2.50!
Thanks AC.
George
Hey, this AC read the article, and maybe it's not an anti-geek tool, but an anti-violence tool.
George
I'm not going to pay it, so I can't read Jon's linked source first hand.
Oh well, there's no sense in trying to evaluate something firsthand, let's just give in to the hysteria.
George
He makes the best arguments for Micorsoft Windows I've ever heard.
George
What would happen if a competeing group decided to perform and record a whole bunch of Phish tunes on an album? Would they be able to?
Yes, a competing group can record any Phish tune they want, after paying the required royalties.
From Cecil Adam's Straight Dope about Micheal Jackson and the Beatles.
Another thing the publisher can't do (in the U.S. at least) is prevent somebody from recording a cover version of a song the publisher owns. Usually the would-be cover artist and the publisher work out a deal on royalties. However, if negotiations fail, U.S. law allows the cover artist to make and market the recording anyway provided he pays a stipulated (and fairly stiff) royalty to the publisher.
Would the Dead Kennedys be able to produce a sharply modified Phish satire album?
If the Dead Kennedy's were still around, I'm sure they could, you just described Weird Al's career.
Not that anybody would want to listen to yet another band similar to Phish, but the whole myth of "open source" and Phish is, umm, a myth.
You're not thinking of it in the right way. It's not Open Source as in you get the lyrics and tabs, and can recreate the songs anyway you want to, and call it Phish, it's Open Source as in you can freely trade the live recordings. Maybe GPL music is closer to the true meaning.
Many bands do not allow audience taping, and attempt to prosecute people trading unauthorized recordings. This may be due to record company pressure, but the idea is "Only we can determine what music of ours you can listen to, if we haven't gone over the music and approved it, you aren't supposed to listen to it."
Phish (and more originally, though not the first, the Grateful Dead) feel that the fans should be free to tape a live concert, and once they are done playing a concert live, the fans are free to trade these live concerts for other live concerts, as long as no profit is involved. Perhaps a better way to describe this is as "Open Source distribution."
Yes, "Open Source distribution". If I don't like the quality of a CDR I get from MZ, I'm free to look for a CDR from TB, JT, or AJ, and never deal with MZ again. If I want to accumulate 400 hours of live Dead without paying a cent to the Grateful Dead organization (or 400 hours of Phish to the Phish organization), I'm free to do so.
I hope this helps,
George
However, if I recall my history correctly, the Protestant "revolution" was as much a revolution as a rebellion. A rebellion against what? why, against the then-current religion. So you see, at _that point in time_, technology (freedom) and religion *did not get along*.
But it was a *religious rebellion*!
The Protestant revolution wasn't saying religion is bad, God is bad.
It was saying you don't need this huge structure to interface with God, you can do it yourself (hence my Open Source allusion).
At that point in time, technology and a dominant religion did not get along, but a new religion was certainly using technology for all it could.
George
Doh, my bad!
Islamic scientists invented distillation.
George
Crusades: You have to plan and implement a system of genocide, attempting to exterminate people who don't believe in your God.
I kind of implied it by saying infidels (who also consider them their Holy Lands).
Spanish Inquisition: You have to root out and torture people with large land holdings who refuse to 'donate' those holdings to the church.
Yeah, but nobody expects a game about the Spanish Inquisition.
More seriously, I was trying to describe scenarios that would be fun, and not too tasteless. You don't play Panzer General and get extra points for razing the Warsaw Ghetto, or capturing Jews, you play for the military interest, though you can't deny such atrocities are a result of the actions in Panzer General.
Okay, tasteless Christian games, you are warned.
Golgotha: Two player game, one mocks and beats Christ as he carries the cross and dies on the cross, the other plays Christ, extra points for dying beatifically.
Witch, witch: Kill any strange or non docile women in Salem.
Abortionist-Hunter: Hunt the wily abortionist with a sniper scope. Reverberates with today's headlines (RIP Bernard Slepian).
Stone the adulteress: Throw stones at the adulteress, try no to hit the do gooders.
Gah, I'm as bad as Katz, now.
George