How to Launder Money
First of all: Don’t break the law. Don’t break the law. Don’t break the law.
Now I would like to discuss money laundering.
This is a topic that has nagged at me since the movie “Office Space” was released. How can a bunch of highly educated people not have a clue as to how to launder money? ANY amount of money? It is ridiculous to think that people who have been to college can’t figure out how to make something as anonymous as CASH become an untraceable item.
There are two driving principles to launder money: (1) You want it to be untraceable. In order for the money to be untraceable you need to convert it from one type of monetary system to a different type of monetary system, or you need to send it from one anonymous account to a different anonymous bank account with timed transactions. And (2) Once you have this money, you want to be able to spend the money without fear of being tracked down.
Pretend you have somehow acquired a few thousand dollars (no more than say…$100k) and you want to spend it…but you don’t know the history of the money and you suspect that it may be money that was acquired through less-than honorable means.
Normally of course, one would be inclined to turn in the money to the authorities, but for the purpose of this posting let’s presume that if you go to the authorities someone in your immediate family will have to face the music and go to jail or otherwise face legal punishment or criminalization.
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For Chrst’s sake, why can’t we get a high resolution street fighter? Is it so fucking hard?
Or at least some good looking 2d games. What the hell.
Six More Months of Legal Terrorism
Congress has authorized the use of the Constitution-trampling Patriot Act for another six more months. It was a moment in time that our leaders had to make the right decision and allow the law to expire. It was meant to expire. The Congressmen who authorized the USA PATRIOT ACT without reading it in the first place did so with the expectation that it would expire by 2006.
While five years since 9/11 seemed like an eternity, it has whizzed by at a breakneck pace…and rather than do the right thing and allow the law to expire, we have extended the life of something that allows the President to do exactly what we chastised him for doing just one week ago and covered by this posting at eightandfive.com.
Why is covert action not always a good thing?
Police in NYC are infiltrating protests and getting away with it. More frightening, while participating in the protests they are inciting people to do things that they aren’t there to do. This article from the NYTimes details an officer inciting a crowd to action not once, but twice. The most chilling statement in the article is:
Charles S. Haight, a federal judge in Manhattan, ruled that the dangers of terrorism were “perils sufficient to outweigh any First Amendment cost.”
How can we let this occur?
What else is slipping by in the name of protection?
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Chronic What? -cles of Narnia
The most insane thing happened this past Saturday night. I saw something on SNL that was gut-bustingly funny, funnier than anything I’ve seen on that show in years, perhaps in a decade (I just realized I’ve been watching this show for the past fifteen years, which is somewhat depressing).
Some of the new cast, who I’d love to credit, but am too lazy to look up, made a digital short rap video that is my new favorite song for the next couple of days. We’ll host it here at eightandfive until I notice any freaky bandwidth issues, or until I get a cease and desist letter.
The Power of Trust
Today the NYT reported that the Whitehouse has listened to conversations American’s have been having without getting court orders (illegally). This in conjunction with the patriot act represents a significant increase in the distrust of Americans (and people in general). Religions traditionally have had two parts: fear mongering (do this or you go hell) and trust mongering (trust everybody and you will be trust worthy). When considering the evolution of religion it’s easy to see how these disparate aspects have been beneficial to the longevity of any group they’ve been associated with; the questions remain, however, which is more valuable and how do we make the more valuable aspect pervasive. I believe I know what the answer is and that is the former.
Trust first and trustworthiness will follow.
There are some who would disagree with me and I’m curious to know how my fellow 8&5ers feel. I’m also curious to know your thought for the best method to increase the level of trust within the different areas of our influence: our friends, family, community, country and our world. I for one think that my parents helped me develop the level of trust I’m able to give but I can’t discount the influence of Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street and also the Christian Sunday school I was raised with.
Non-traditional holiday movies
What cinematic aids do you use to get in the holiday spirit? I know many would say A Christmas Story (I love it), It’s a Wonderful Life (eh), or Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer (only if properly medicated). I’d like to know if anyone has come across any holiday gems that may not be on the usual lists. I recommend Blackadder’s Christmas Carol. It’s a nice reversal of the Charles Dickens story, and will be especially amusing to anyone who has seen and enjoyed other Blackadder material.
HDTV is really neat
The christmas buying frenzy is upon us again, and with it comes lots of neat stuff. One of the neatest things that I have recently aquired is an HDTV. This leads me to the point of this article, as soon as any red blooded American gets thier hands on one of these neat devices they start thinking “Damn, this would make a really neat computer monitor.” And it will, it really will… But not without a little technical struggle. HDTVs are basically computer monitors, really big computer monitors, that can take various HDTV signals and scale them to the actually resolution of the screen. HDTV comes in a variety of resolutions from 480p (the p stands for progressive) to 1080i (the i is for interlaced, but more about this later). However an HDTV’s resolution will fall somwhere between 480p and the fabled 1080p. TVs that are currently on the market have many different true resolutions including, but not limited to 1024×1024, 1280×768, 1368×768 to 1920×1080. Throughout time most computer monitors have been 4:3 aspect ratio, and have had resolutions like 640×480, 1024×758, 1280×1024, and 1600×1200. As a result of this consistancy windows plug and play and PC graphics cards cant seem to figure out the strange resolutions that HDTV seem to all be in. I spent some time trying to get windows to discover the real resolution of my TV without much luck, not to mention I spent a even more time googling linux boards about how to get the right settings for X11. The solution is a neat little shareware program with a free trial for windows called PowerStrip. PowerStrip installs easily in windows and provides a windows dialog that lets you scroll through a list of basically every different resolution of every different screen ever conceived of. You can add any of those resolutions to your monitor driver, and it will show up in your windows Display control panel. It even adjusts your settings in real time if nothing off the list works. My TV only showed up with 1280×768 even though I have a 1368×768 screen, I added the mode for 1368×768 [LCD] and everything just worked. Also as a final note you can copy the settings as text to the clipboard, these settings include the “modline” that you need to add to your xorg.conf file to make that resolution work in linux. It is working great and I am really happy, now I have to play Civ 4 again on the big screen…
Nintendo Revolution Prediction
First off: I’m sorry for geeking out so much of recent but I’ve been heavily entrenched in video games this year and the changing of generations weighs heavy on my consciousness.
The juice: Shigeru Miyamoto who has given us most of Nintendo has announced that there is another surprise regarding the Revolution. There are rumors that it will be some form of voice recognition, however, that was announced a long time ago. It’s possible that Nintendo could try to play off stuff they brought up a year ago as new, but I doubt it. I expect it to be a foot control, perhaps this is a bit of a long shot but I don’t think it’s unreasonable. Perhaps something to detect the way you lean or how your feet are oriented under you. So that’s my prediction: other secret of the Revolution is some sort of interface involving feet or body movement.
P.S. Sorry about all the categories that this is listed under, but when you start clicking those little boxxes… it’s tough to stop.
A prediction regaurding the “next-gen”
As you may or may not know, the Xbox 360 launched on the 22nd of november and sold out immediatly, and with it comes the official start of the NEXT GENERATION. In my opinion the 360 is kind of a lame start, but its a start non-the-less. The weakest part of the 360 launch strat was the games… they are completely terrible. The key to being “next-gen” is to get something different that perfectly uses the new interface (that is, curiously, not changing much with MS or Sony) and also uses the graphics in a way that distinguishes it from previous gen games (GTA shifting to 3D–halo great visuals, great use of the dual-shock controller and superior multi-player). Halo 3 might be the game for the 360, but I doubt it… in fact, I’m not real optimistic for the 360. The only chance it has at taking Sony is that if its online infrastructure (xbox live) is the defining feature of the next generation of Consoles. It is shaping up to be really good, the game watching, being able to download instead of going to a game store. The games Crystal Quest and Geometry Wars are enough to make me get the console (if you haven’t played these games you must).
GTA on the PS3 still has another shot as a generation defining game, perhaps for more than just the next console generation. It’s easy to take advantage of the more powerful hardware with a giant game like GTA, it can always get gianter and a bit more resolute and people will notice. The only sure bet this cycle is that Nintendo will do very well.
Mark my words, the Nintendo revolution and the Dual Screen will usher in a serious change to the way people interact with electronic devices, mice will be different because of the Revolution. I’m not suggesting that they will sell more than either of the other two systems, but they may. The only chance of Nintendo’s failure is if MS or Sony can take advantage of the more powerful hardware to create a complete interface change (Sony’s eye-toy has a small chance)–the days of the dual shock should have been done years ago. Microsoft has one chance as well, Xbox Live–and it is really good, but Sony and Nintendo could still do online better (although I kind of doubt they will, but Nintendo is talking tough and I wouldn’t be surprised if they come up with something killer), the problem with relying solely on Xbox live is the lack of ubiquitous and solid broadband. Microsoft will do alright this time around but Sony will do significantly better, Nintendo will surprise, it may even do remarkably well. We have yet to see a “mandatory” second system (people with the Xbox don’t feel obliged to buy a PS2 or a Gamecube, as those with a PS2 do not always buy an Xbox) the Revolution could be the system that you have to buy no matter which other console you bought first, bank on them to do well next holiday season and better the following.
Singing and Dancing
I was just playing Karaoke Revolution Party by Konami and it was pretty intense. I bought the game about a month ago and got a dance pad to go with it because, unlike earlier karaoke games, this one features dance pad support. That means that not only do you need to sing (in tune) but also dance (with rhythm). I’d just like to say that it isn’t an easy thing to but it is a lot of fun–also an incredible workout.