Posted 7:59 AM by Gerald Klaas
I had another letter to the editor published today:

Medical pot
Re "War on docs," Our views, July 18: Although I agree with The Bee editorial's question, "What happened to the Republican principle of states' rights?" in regard to the Bush administration's seeking to revoke the federal prescription license of physicians who prescribe medical marijuana, I believe The Bee should use a lower-case "r" when posing this question.

This question is bigger than the politics of this administration. This question is about whether the Controlled Substances Act itself violates the 10th Amendment, a question pertaining to all Americans (lower-case republicans).

The federal government should not be able to revoke a physician's license because it has no grounds for granting one in the first place. So when the Supreme Court does someday overturn the CSA, we won't have to worry about this "misguided, disturbing attack on physicians, on patients and on voters." Further, we can get rid of a whole lot of other unnecessary federal interference in our lives, starting with the so-called war on drugs.

- Gerald Klaas, Sacramento

OK, so now off to camping in the El Dorado National Forest. TTYL,

Posted 11:52 PM by Gerald Klaas
Doug asks what I think of the Larry Lessig blog.

I think Larry Lessig may think that there should be no copyright laws. I'm trying to figure this guy out. ......What do you think about this Larry Lessig guy Gerald Klaas?

First, he's a big Howard Dean supporter, so regardless that he is a Stanford law professor, his grasp of the Constitution is suspect in my view. Anyone who can support Universal Health Care (at the federal level), inceased federal involvement in primary education and promotes class envy with soak the rich taxes (and redistribute the plunder) doesn't have the same understanding of the Founders' intentions as I do. Truth is, I find it scarey that this guy taught a Constitutional law course in Spring 2002. Still, given that I may give less weight to his opinion than I would to someone like George Will or Walter Williams, I don't believe that he wants to do away with copyrights. He appears to be a big supporter of the Creative Commons Project, which is attempting to standardize licenses that are less restrictive than standard copyright, yet still retains the original copyright to the creator. That's a far cry from getting rid of copyright altogether. There are many reasons that artists may choose to release their work without compensation, this is a way to help them preserve the rights they wish to preserve while releasing those they feel they can regarding duplication, derivative works, etc. The artist maintains the copyright and has the right to release as many or as few of those rights as they choose.

So Doug, just so you don't worry about me getting enough beer and craziness in my freetime, this weekend, I'm going camping on the 20th Annual camping trip with "the boys". I'll be back at you Monday with a foggy outlook and a silly grin.

;-)

Posted 9:28 PM by Gerald Klaas
Just before I purchased my future retirement home in Southern Oregon, I was very pleased to find that it is located in the "mythical state" of Jefferson. Now it's not quite the Free State Project, but it says something about the people living in the area:

Jefferson, the 51st state, is located in the mountain border region of what is more commonly known as Northern California and Southern Oregon. The State of Jefferson secession movement of 1941 was begun primarily to draw attention to the need of good roads into the back country to access vital mineral and timber resources for defense related purposes before the United States was drawn into WWII. Jeffersonians desire to be free from the influence of population centers because voters in those areas tend to vote against the lifestyles and livelihoods of their rural counterparts. The inequalities in votes and legislative representation have led to many attempts at secession and statehood.

I'm looking forward to living among people who continue to respect other people's freedom.

Posted 9:45 PM by Gerald Klaas
It seems that Hormel Foods is trying to force software company SpamArrest to change their name. I think Hormel is likely to lose the case. I can't see how the average American would confuse a can of fatty meat goo with a piece of software that attempts to stop Unsolicited Commercial E-mail, or how even if an association was made, how it would hurt the existing trademark. I think Hormel should take a different tactic to the issue. Rather than a cease and desist request, I think they should embrace the potential for free advertisement. Maybe request that a picture of the can be included in the software splash screen, or ask for a menu option that hyperlinks to the Hormel website. To put it another way, they ought to turn lemons into lemonade.

Posted 9:28 PM by Gerald Klaas
One of my older brothers today sent me an e-mail about PatriotPetitions.US collecting e-"signatures" asking the President and Congress to support meaningful tax reform legislation, including H.J. Resolution 15 to "Repeal the 16th Amendment and Abolish the Income Tax". This petition site is sponsored by The Federalist. The Federalist is a conservative journal. I used to read The Federalist regularly, but not for about 5 or 6 years now. I understand their position, they're asking for either a flat tax or a national sales tax. I was very impressed with this position in 1996 when Steve Forbes suggested it as a presidential candidate. I voted for Forbes in the primary of 1996. Today, I agree with Sherry Peel Jackson, that the flat tax and the national sales tax are no more Constitutional than the progressive income tax. If Congress would issue our money themselves, as is their Constitutional duty, rather than through the un-Constitutional private corporation called the Federal Reserve, we wouldn't need an income tax.

Posted 9:40 PM by Gerald Klaas
E-mail SPAM is one of my pet peeves. As a professional geek I've even come up with my own proposal for a SPAM stopping software. There are currently some commercial challenge-response systems to stop SPAM. I think they have promise, but so far they all have an achilles heel. In their effort to be commercially viable ( i.e., they guarrantee that they can be paid for the service) they put their webserver in the middle of the system. This doesn't tend to scale well for millions of users, it means the system breaks if the company goes under, and it means that the user is on a subscription service, paying continuously for the service. I think the hurdle they haven't figured out yet is the increasing use of Blackberries and WAP enabled cell phones for reading e-mail in text mode. For now, text mode e-mail can't complete the Challenge Response systems.


Doug, a year ago I was convinced that there was money to be made in building the Wi-Fi public network. A year later, I'm convinced that the necessary capital investment will be unrecoverable in all but the most controlled monopoly situations, like airports and hotels. I think that Wi-Fi access is going to become a customer condiment like air-conditioning or clean restrooms. It's pretty tough to compete with free hotspots.