Posted 10:59 PM by Gerald Klaas
Welcome, Jon Davis and thank you for responding to my earlier comments about your resignation from the WTPC.

I wholeheartedly agree with this observation, and fully give Bob and Devvy my .., well, admiration and appreciation and respect that they wouldn't, and frankly couldn't reply in the way I would have preferred, and I recognize the limitations that they are facing with this regard because they are what they are: a corporation......I am a natural individual, and I only deal with natural individuals. I refuse to submit to the notion that anyone but God can create an individual. That to me is more important than holding government accountable for its failures, because it is a test of my own integrity where my values and beliefs are being established.

Jon, I respect your fidelity to your beliefs, and when I read your premise page last week, I could see how dedicated you are to staying pure in your loyalties. This is why it surprised me that you signed up for WTPC in the first place. This is not meant as any kind of jab, and I'm happy that you didn't take it that way (obviously, since you agreed with my observation). Even if you can't square your beliefs with association within a corporation, we who can still share many viewpoints with you, and you obviously have opinions, logic and observations that are valuable to the Tax Honesty movement. I hope you will continue to visit our little corner of the blogosphere and chime in when you feel the need. Even though I expect we are likely to agree most of the time, I actually look forward to when we disagree, as that's when my logic, consistency, and opinions will be most challenged and possibly changed. I'm especially looking forward to when you and Allen Hacker disagree on a point, as I respect both of your viewpoints, and would be very challenged in such an event to consider each of your logic.

PS: I agree with Mongo (once again). I like Doug's reference to Faux News. I shall adopt as well.

Posted 10:16 PM by Gerald Klaas
Doug, you're right, the "we refuse to answer letter" to Congressman Bartlett is posted at WTP. I also have it in text format on my 16th Amendment website.

Next week I start back to teaching at the local community college. Tomorrow night is the faculty orientation meeting. Friday I'm headed up to Oregon, so I'm likely to be pretty quiet until Monday.

Posted 10:39 PM by Gerald Klaas
The LovSan (Blaster) Windows worm made my day a little busier than normal. As a computer security professional, my phone was ringing off the hook today.

Tonight I attended a Town Hall meeting with my congressman, Doug Ose. At the meeting I saw Sacramento County WTP coordinator, Brett Heeke, and Libertarian Party congressional candidate (CA-03) Art Tuma, as well as meeting the Yolo County WTP coordinator, Myron Wright. Brett asked about congress delegating the issuance of money to a private corporation known as the Federal Reserve. The congressman said that Congress delegates authority all the time, he didn't seem to be too concerned about the Federal Reserve issue. I reminded Ose that I was at his March 2003 Town Hall meeting when I asked about Rose Lear (she was on her hunger fast at the time). I reminded him that he had said he would look into the petition for redress of grievances that was delivered to his office on both April 15, 2002 and November 8, 2002, I asked him if the 1st Amendment right to petition created a duty of the government to respond. He said that common sense tells you it does. I thanked him for his staff efforts that got an answer to my FOIA request of the IRS that got me a copy of the April 18, 2002 letter from the IRS to Congressman Bartlett refusing to answer the questions. I asked Ose to submit the questions himself asking for answers.

Posted 5:46 PM by Gerald Klaas
I knew Doug would react to my anti-software patent post considering how I feel about copyright issues. Doug says

I don't understand the difference between a software patent and a copyrighted song. I think there should be no such thing as intellectual property of any kind. And free money for everyone!

The way I think of copyright, it pertains to a particular item. Something that is the direct result of the work of a person or persons. A painting, a book, an article, a poem, a song. The particular item is copyrighted, not the idea behind the item. That is, a sunset is not copyrighted, just a particular painting of a sunset. The romance story is not copyrighted, just a particular author's version of it (the specific words used to tell the story). Love is not copyrighted, just the particular poem or song is copyrighted. Another poet and another musician can still write love poems or love songs. Software patents have become the equivalent of copyrighting an idea. Imagine if one musician were able to claim that no other musician could write about finding the perfect girl, not that they couldn't take the words from a particular song and insert directly into a "new" song, but any reference to romance would be assumed to be derived from their song about romance. That's what software patents have done. Imagine that someone claims (and someone does) that they hold the patent on hyperlinking, or imagine that (again someone does hold this patent) someone holds a patent on e-commerce "shopping carts". In the copyright world, you might be able to copyright the term "shopping cart" as referring to an online checkout procedure, but you wouldn't be able to copyright (patent) the idea that you could count items, arrive at a charge, and collect electronic payments through a website.

Posted 10:10 PM by Gerald Klaas
Microsoft today lost a patent infringement lawsuit with a $521 million jury award to the holders of a patent on browser add-in and plug-in technology. I expect this award might bring the concept of software patents back to the legislative forefront for a while. Personally, I'm against the granting of software patents. Prior to Diamond v. Diehr in 1981, the Patent and Trademark Office did not grant software patents. I guess I've never gotten over Unisys belatedly starting to enforce it's LZW compression patent used in Gif files.