Gavin writes:

> I assume that Wirt will do what's required to avoid any tax implications of
>  accepting a lot of money from people, etc.  I also think we should set some
>  time limit after which we give up and the contributions get returned to the
>  contributors.

It's important to understand that one of the attributes of "just plowing
ahead" is that you don't have time to think about all of the ramifications --
and taxation is one of them. I hadn't thought about that until Gavin
mentioned it. (Of course, if you do take the time to think things out
carefully, virtually nothing ever gets done).

We just held a quick conference here and agreed that we will treat this
project as a standard AICS Research project. If we were to create a
professional organization to cover this project, not only would that take six
months to do, it would still be taxed in an identical manner to AICS. A
non-profit or charitable organization designation (which we would have
trouble selling to the IRS under any circumstance) would take as long and
gain us nothing. Under all circumstances, this is going to be a money-in,
money-out project. The net revenues should be zero when all's said and done.

Nonetheless, handling it in this way means that New Mexico residents will
have to add on (or have it subtracted out) a 5% sales tax, with only us
paying a 6.375% tax (city, county and state sales taxes). The US government
charges taxes only on revenues, not sales, so there won't be any taxes due
there.

As for time-to-completion, I think that this is doable by HPWorld. Indeed, I
believe it's fairly critical for the ad to appear during the conference. My
vote would be for the WSJ. Not only is that read by CEOs, it's also read --
or at least well-known -- to every mom-and-pop lumberyard owner who runs an
HP3000 without a dp staff -- but who otherwise never pops up anyone's radar
screen, including HP's.

Secondly, as Ken Sletten said, a slightly aggressive advertisement in this
venue will have newsworthiness beyond just the ad itself. If we want to
"leverage"  the play (multiply the effect) we get out of this, the mainstream
technology editors should be made very aware of the fact that the ad is
coming and will appear during the conference.

In a very real way, this is blackmail. But it is a form of blackmail done for
all the right reasons. If we're going to do it, the ad should say what we
mean, in plain English, and its presence should be well advertised before the
fact.

Wirt Atmar