Embezzlement in Catalyst

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 3:58 am

Don't you non-FrankTrollmans ever get tired of Frank being proven right all of the time?

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 4:31 am

"How dare Frank be right! How dare he be better at our jobs than we are? How dare he being right at the expense of us being wrong?"

I was actually thinking that earlier. It's a thought which must have gone through a lot of designer's heads.

Gainsbourg · Post by **Gainsbourg** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 4:45 am

Here's some more info on creditors forcing chapter 7 bankruptcy

Also after reading that ... lol@ Bull over on Dumpshock "Nothing to see here ..."

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 5:26 am

Once in awhile we get to be right. But it forces us to work harder, right?

-Crissa

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 6:21 am

So for those of you who don't have a PACER account (which should be... almost all of you), you can still get copies of the documents in question Here. And the accompanying summons Here.

In other news, Topps has a terrible phone tree, where I seriously got redirected to a fax machine (this is incredibly painful, and more so when you are using headphones to talk). But I have discerned that Topps' legal council is in possession of those documents and has been alerted to the fact that they are owed money as well. Rather more than WildFire is, from what I can see.

-Username17

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 6:54 am

Interesting.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 7:06 am

Too bad I don't know much about US bankruptcy cases - I have sizeable experience with Swiss bankruptcy laws and cases, but that doesn't help much.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 8:43 am

Remember, they are filing this on April 16th, after WildFire received all their back Cthulhutech stock to pay off the outstanding debts. Catalyst has been not paying a wide variety of debts for a long time, delivering payment of any kind only under duress. WildFire LLC made an agreement to take remaining Cthulhutech books in lieu of money to square off their debts, and when the packages were opened and the materials accounted for, Catalyst had shorted them by thirty seven thousand, two hundred and thirty six dollars and fifty nine cents.

Since WildFire has been getting the runaround on payment for many months now (they terminated Catalyst's abilities to sell their books due to the non-payment of royalties back in February), so upgrading to a motion for Chapter 7 is the next logical choice. There are more than twelve creditors, so expecting more of them to sign on in the near future is a good bet. The biggest creditor (Topps) wasn't part of the initial filing, but they easily could join. They have the biggest claim.

Bottom line: the Freelancers who withheld copyright to get paid were right, and the people who told them they were being foolish or mean spirited can go eat crow.

-Username17

Jilocasin · Post by **Jilocasin** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 9:03 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Bottom line: the Freelancers who withheld copyright to get paid were right, and the people who told them they were being foolish or mean spirited can go eat crow.

-Username17

I've been trying to comprehend the kind of mental acrobatics someone has to go through to think that supporting criminals and their compatriots is an acceptable practice (even if it's just by indicating that withholding copyright is somehow not the ethical thing to do), and I just cannot understand what thought processes lead people to believe that not being paid for work in a timely manner is somehow acceptable. I mean come on, what the hell good are a person's rights unless they belligerently assert them every once in awhile?

I'm very pleased to see those documents. Whatever the end result actually is, it's a good kick in the pants.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 9:12 am

That's what my experiences in collecting would indicate as well. Most people who don't pay their debts but continue to do business only pay when forced to.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 9:19 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Bottom line: the Freelancers who withheld copyright to get paid were right, and the people who told them they were being foolish or mean spirited can go eat crow.

-Username17

But Frank, if you had just never said anything, then no one would have ever wanted to get paid, and Wildfire would have learned it's place and Topps would have given them the license for free and Shadowrun could continue to run forever without any concerns or problems at all.

Well, they would have to hire all brand new writers every now and then, what with half of them dying of starvation because they expect to get paid for their work and aren't smart enough to own an RPG company to embezzle from. But sacrifices must be made.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 7:30 pm

Stahlseele wrote:By the way, right now it's mostly hailing praise from all around the web for Franks Matrix rules on dumpshock. Only thing people really don't seem to like is the brain-hacking. But they agree on it being consistent in itself and with the rest of the rules.

Yeah... you're right. That's really weird. They pulled in some jackass electronic system engineer to rant on and on and on about how brains were analog devices. Which is horse shit. Neurons are digital devices. They only have two states: firing an action potential and not doing that. That's why you can take two pins and press them into the skin and have that feel like one jab - there are a limited number of neurons and all they can do is fire or not fire.

And just as an aside, Randall Bills, who has been exceedingly silent on the whole affair, just posted to tell the dumpshockers the streetdate for the SR4LE . . as his second post all in all . .

Yeah. That's weird. May 3rd for the street date. But the important part is the people who actually paid for the damn things a year and more ago. And those people are often as not supposed to have their book sent directly by Catalyst. But Randall has his wife working shipping "whenever she can get around to it" and Troy left with his shipping computer. I don't know if they know who is supposed to get those books.

-Username17

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 9:13 pm

Due to me being a tech-head and not a medic junkie like yourself, i will simply have to believe you when you state that neurons are digital.
Seems logical enough to me though. On and off, One and Zero, Yes and No.
You are right, if they can, indeed, figure out who is supposed to get what is an interesting question in itself O.o

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 9:31 pm

They form fuzzy neural networks of interrelations, though - their firing of 0/1 doesn't control just one thing, it's generally tied into multiple events. When a sufficient number fire due to an event then your brain considers the input relevant. Frank's example of a nocireceptor is far more simple than the networks in the brain.

I haven't read the End of the Matrix so that's basically where my critique ends. Besides, its OT for this thread anyway.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 9:35 pm

Uh. Mean Liar, are you retarded?

Computers also have interrelated connections so that a bit being 1 or 0 has more than one effect.

That has literally nothing to do with Analog vs Digital.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 9:35 pm

It was simple enough for me to understand at least conceptually.
Don't make him start with the complicated medical sciency stuff again, i usually can't follow with that <.<;,

souran · Post by **souran** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 9:47 pm

I too think that a description of the brian the brain that says "its more like a digitmal machine than an analog manchine" probably doesn't pass scientific muster.

However, it doesn't even matter, its only relevant to the portion of the shadowrun player population who are both electronics experts AND neruologists.

Whats important is can you brain hack vs. can't you. If its there, works, is interesting, and has enough fluff around it it takes a person with technical knowledge of the fields involved to begin to even argue the point its really moot.

Quantumboost · Post by **Quantumboost** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 10:28 pm

souran wrote:I too think that a description of the brian the brain that says "its more like a digitmal machine than an analog manchine" probably doesn't pass scientific muster.

And you would be wrong. The brain is a digital machine, and it is more like itself than it is like anything that isn't itself (i.e. any analog machines).

It isn't a Von Neumann architecture machine, like all modern computers are, but that hardly means it's not inherently digital.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 10:44 pm

I'm actually writing a paper revolving around some of this brain/computer stuff. Long story short, neurons are either on or off (digital) the activation they send out isn't one set value, they don't send 0 or 1 in other words. So they aren't analogue, they may have a bit more computational leeway then a standard Turing machine because the weights between neurons are effectively real numbers. I did a really lazy proof a while back that a neural net and a von Neumann are computationally equivalent because you can simulate one with another.

Could you 'hack' a brain? Er... maybe, this is science fiction so if it makes a good story then yes you can. You can hack an analogue machine so that idiot on dump shock is, well, an idiot.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 11:37 pm

souran wrote:Whats important is can you brain hack vs. can't you. If its there, works, is interesting, and has enough fluff around it it takes a person with technical knowledge of the fields involved to begin to even argue the point its really moot.

Yes and this is my favorite part of the argument in the first place. We're already allowing the possibility of this mythical "High Density Signal" that "flips bits" in the machines you point it at regardless of non-minor problems like how the device is physically configured or logically configured. It's working on some magical principal that might not even be possible within the Fifth World because it's somehow connected in a subtle way to the awakening and mana flow and so on. And then "oh no! but you can't add brain hacking to the magic!!1! unrealistic!!!"

Clutch9800 · Post by **Clutch9800** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 11:50 pm

I don't know if they know who is supposed to get those books.

They know.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 12:01 am

Juton wrote: Could you 'hack' a brain? Er... maybe, this is science fiction so if it makes a good story then yes you can. You can hack an analogue machine so that idiot on dump shock is, well, an idiot.

Yeah, the real question is pretty much *should* you be able to hack a brain, not if it's scientifically possible.

Clutch9800 · Post by **Clutch9800** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 12:09 am

RandomCasualty2 wrote:
Juton wrote: Could you 'hack' a brain? Er... maybe, this is science fiction so if it makes a good story then yes you can. You can hack an analogue machine so that idiot on dump shock is, well, an idiot.
Yeah, the real question is pretty much *should* you be able to hack a brain, not if it's scientifically possible.

Absolutely.

You could do all kinds of good that way. Cure PTSD. Maybe Schizophrenia.

Lots of stuff.

You could also do much harm, but that's true of pretty much most breakthroughs.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 12:13 am

Kaelik wrote:Uh. Mean Liar, are you retarded?

Computers also have interrelated connections so that a bit being 1 or 0 has more than one effect.

That has literally nothing to do with Analog vs Digital.

Only trying to put a greater context on Frank's assertion that neurons exist in simple digital states.

And under the same criteria Frank's post isn't about Analog vs Digital either.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 12:17 am

I rather figured brain hacking would be difficult as your signal generator wouldn't want to be moving relative to the quantum matrix of the target brain.

Basically, it's hard to hit a moving target, especially if it's tiny and complex. Matching motions would be like moving a bull in a china shop. There's a reason we'd want brain jacks and skullcaps.

There's a reason you put microscopic things on a slide.

But we totally know that you can flip bits in a computer from afar. Your handheld device probably holds a map of known processor configurations and uses magnetic imaging technology (and other sci-fi-y stuff) to determine the orientation of the device then fires a high energy ray (some cosmic particle type) with its spin and frequency according to the orientation of the device and its known shielding and bang, you're flipping bits inside of it.

Of course, that requires a level of processing, radiation detection and emission that is beyond today's technology. But it's not as impossible as 'magic'.

-Crissa

...PS, as I write this I'm under chemically induced ADHD so I hope I'm using the words I intend to. No guarantees.