Joseph

I would really like to use this plugin on my blog, but can’t get the mouse over effect to work on the latest version of WordPress. Would you mind emailing me a zip folder with the code you’re using? I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks,
Jake

Also, I think they would argue that IP laws in areas of patents, etc. have slowed innovation and generally hurt progress (no one can improve upon anything without licenses which the original inventor does not even have to give, and why would the original improve it if there is no other competition in the “unique newness” of the contraption).

I personally would not relate this to GNU. They seem to want to “force” items to be free particularly in software. Having no copyright would not mean that you have to release your code because people would be buying compiled software. I would mean that people are actually buying that program and not just a license.

I haven’t worked out a complete theory of this and I sense some possible problems (how does the artist make his living). At the same time there do seem to be obvious problems with IP especially in the patent area.

I’m curious to hear about this book. I love open source software like Linux, but (contra the open source radicals), I think that putting one’s intellectual property in the public domain should be an individual choice. “Information wants to be free”?

Over at GNU, there’s a video of Stephen Fry (http://www.gnu.org/fry/happy-birthday-to-gnu.html) talking about open source and making it sound as though everyone doing code should make that code open to everyone else. But Stephen Fry (as far as I know) has never put his work out on a share-and-share-alike basis. Why are products derived from an actor’s effort different from products derived from a programmer’s effort?

With that in mind, if someone does not have enough love of their country to go out and register themsevles at another location away from their house and also have enough love of their country to go out and vote on election day at an voting station, then I certainly don’t think they have enough love of their country to look up issues and vote responsibly.

So I am personally not in favor of internet voting, voting from home, voting early by mail or anything that does not require a person to actually do something out of the ordinary. Obviously, there may be exceptions to those that cannot physically move or be moved or other such instances, but overall, I think voting has become something people do just because they are told to do it, rather than because they want to do it.

I think we should pray every day that only those people that care about their country and have taken time to actually research issues and people will actually vote.

As I said years ago in the link you cite, right now the candidates we have are exactly what we deserve. And it is largely the Church’s failures that have brought about this sad state of affairs. Thus, Christians’ focus shouldn’t be on the next president but on the cleansing of the Church. Only when she reforms and begins fulfilling her responsibilities to the world will we ever see improvement.

Second, do civil governments have track records of improving quality? Is the civil government the best insurer of such improvements, better than, say, private enterprises that grow out of a free market? Has a government monopoly in things like education or medical regulation ensured the highest of quality? I think not. I find that when the state regulates things (by, for example, requiring licensing), quality decreases and prices go up. But when markets are free, quality increases and prices go down.

Matt, I think your point has validity to a certain point. Obviously, I don’t know what you know in that specific field. But I can conceive of situations in which the government is performing an investigation on something within its own (Constitution-, God-given) jurisdiction – say a fraud, or something – and it wants its own people to perform the investigation. In those cases it is government people doing government work. Joseph’s hesitancy (and mine) is keeping the government doing only its own extremely limited work and keeping it out of the markets. Free markets do a pretty good job in weeding out poor quality and rewarding quality.