logos redux

“The principles in the Bible include the idea that governing authorities are responsible to God for their actions…The government officials must work for justice, not for their own private gain or in order to favor some individuals or groups…Moreover, a subsidy for one particular kind of work [e.g., musicians, artists, inventors, and their distributors] favors this kind of work in comparison with others. It is favoritism toward some. The Bible forbids favoritism or partiality in the government because it is unjust: ‘You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, … Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, …’ (Deuteronomy 16:19-20)…Restrictions on copying amount to a subsidy for certain kinds of intellectual work. That involves partiality, and is unjust.”

Vern Poythress, “Copyrights and Copying: Why the Laws Should be Changed“

“The corporation[s] [e.g., the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America] [have] been clever enough and unscrupulous enough to get lawmakers to make laws forcing manufacturers to make their machines in ways that restrict access and copying. Propaganda will say that all this is a good thing, because we are thereby respecting intellectual property ‘rights.’ In my opinion, both the so-called ‘property’ and the so-called ‘rights’ have been created out of thin air to conceal the actual situation, namely that the government is using bad laws to subsidize monopolists.”

Vern Poythress, “Copyrights and Copying: Why the Laws Should be Changed“

“[Copyright] laws are counterintuitive and complex because they have nothing to do with justice. Every human being has within him a sense of justice. Though he may try to make excuses, and though sometimes the society around him may make excuses for him, he knows that stealing is wrong. But he does not know instinctively that copying is wrong. And he could not know it, because it is not after all morally wrong. It has been made into a ‘wrong’ by arbitrary laws.”

Vern Poythress, “Copyrights and Copying: Why the Laws Should be Changed“

Update: Apparently while I was right that Schoolhouse 2 is dead in terms of new development, there is now a Schoolhouse 3. It seems to add some functionality and syncing with MobileMe but it costs $14. Personally, I don’t want to pay for it and I don’t have a MobileMe account, so I’ll stick with my plan.

For the past couple of semesters I’ve been using a little app called Schoolhouse for course management and organization. The program offers a number of good features like weighted grade tracking, the ability to break assignments into multiple tasks that can be checked off one at a time, beginning and due dates for assignments and a feature that allows you to attach files to a particular assignment (i.e. a syllabus or set of notes). Further, the interface is clean and similar to iCal or Mail. However the program is a bit buggy (especially the weighted grade functions) and data entry is a little clumsy. Also, it seems like the project may be dead. The updates seem to have stopped and I can’t find any discussion of plans for syncing with iPods or iPhones. Overall, I would probably give it 3 stars, but it’s free and it does keep me organized.

However…

What I’m excited about is an app called iProcrastinate. It already looks like a great app and if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve already entered all my data for the semester into Schoolhouse I would make the switch now. Instead I’ve decided to wait for the promised syncing ability. iProcrastinate already has a nice, user friendly interface as well as a mobile version designed for iPod and iPhone, both of which are free. It seems to have most of the functionality of Schoolhouse (with the exception of the weighted grade calculation and beginning dates for assignments), but adds the ability to export a task to iCal with a single click, and an archiving feature. When a task is completed the box shows a check mark in it, but with another click on the Archive button it is placed in a collapsible side tray, similar to that found on Adobe Reader. With another click it can be restored to the main window. So, as soon as syncing with iPhone is released I’ll be switching over. It would be very helpful to not have to pull out the computer every time I just need to check what pages I’m supposed to read for a class.

I’ve been trying for two days now to figure out how to listen to my lectures for one of my Access (internet based) classes at a faster than normal speed. I know Windows Media Player will do it, but I don’t like/want Windows Media Player. After trying several pretty lame third party options, some of which had to be payed for to get full versions, I found the solution, which turned out to be what I had originally tried to do but given up on due to the confusing aspects of the new Quicktime 10’s controls. So here it is.

Open your audiobook/lecture/podcast in Quicktime. Either find it in your iTunes Folder and “open with” or just drag and drop it on the QT icon.

If you still have QT 7, then simply go to Window -> Show A/V Controls and voila, there you are.

…or if you have QT 10 and Snow Leopard you can pop in your disk and within the “optional downloads” you can download QT 7 (I haven’t actually tried this). However, this is a bit of a clunky solution.

Here’s the best option. Open the file in Quicktime 10 and then Command-click the fast forward button to increase the speed to 2x speed or the rewind button to decrease it to 1/2x speed. But better, option-click will move the speed up or down. .1x at a time. I found 2x speed to be too much. I can take it up to about 1.6x or 1.7x using the option-click function and still understand it easily. Further, the pitch doesn’t change much so your profs/pastors/etc. won’t sound like a Chipmunks Christmas album.

I have to say however Apple dropped the ball on this one. They took away a set of intuitive controls that were optionally viewable, and added a completely hidden feature that allows you to do only some of what the A/V controls allowed. Further, if you search A/V controls in “help” you get nothing, and if you check the “Control Movie Playback” or “Tips and Tricks for Quicktime Player” there is nothing about this feature. Lame Apple, lame.

Thanks to a very felicitous trade with my in-laws Alicia and I now have a Kodak EasyShare, Z712 IS. It’s a 7.1 MP camera with a 12x zoom and a good number of manual features. It’s not a DSLR, but it’s about as close as you can get.

I’m pretty excited. I’ll post some pictures soon. I took some shots of Alicia’s parents’ dog in mid-air catching a Frisbee in West Virginia last weekend that I may put up.

Also, I’m going to take some shots of Alicia’s belly and if I can convince her they may appear around here sometime soon.

This morning as I was driving to the seminary for class I heard on the radio that President Obama was coming to St. Louis this morning for a town hall style meeting commemorating his 100th day in office. Then, just as the commentator had moved on to talk about Spector’s identity crisis and the very real possibility that Franken will take Minnesota and give the Dem’s the super-majority I heard sirens. I looked up just in time to see that I was being passed on the left by about 15 solid black sedans and SUV’s with blue and red lights flashing and sirens blaring followed by a similar appearing black truck. In the midst of all this was a black stretch limo surrounded on all sides. It was sort of surreal.

Update: The news stories say he didn’t arrive until 9:30, but if what I saw at 8:30 wasn’t a presidential motorcade I don’t know what it could have been given the number of vehicles, the secret service all black with police lights look and the large black stretch-limo in the middle.

In other news, I’ve finally switched to Firefox. I was talking to a friend the other day and he convinced me. What I like so far: plug-ins, themes, customizable features. What I don’t like: it’s a little to techy for me. I downloaded a theme a few minutes ago, only to find out that to use the sub-themes (i.e. other appearances that I thought were part of the package) I have to modify my chrome files or something. I don’t know what that means and I don’t have time to figure it out right now. More annoying though is that it wasn’t even clear until I spent 10 or 15 minutes digging around after I had downloaded it that this was the case. I assumed if I downloaded the theme I’d get what I saw in the screen shots.

Plug-ins I like: 1 Click Weather gives me up to date weather info that can be moused over for expanded details in the bottom status bar.

Zotero is amazing. It allows me to instantly grab bibliographic information from all sorts of pages (Amazon, Google books, etc.) which can then be dragged and dropped into papers or used in any number of ways. It doesn’t work perfectly, but it gets the majority of it.

Read it Later is a great way to grab and store pages/articles you want to read at some point in a que without clogging up your bookmarks.

Finally, Sage and Twitbin both allow me to quickly and simply open side bars for feed reading and Twittering.

This may be old news for a lot of you but for those Safari die-hards (which I was), I think it’s worth it. Safari seems to have just given up on updating Safari to take advantage of new technology. Also, importing your Safari settings is quick and easy.

I definitely do not have time to blog right now (3 more days before the wedding) but the rumors were right, Apple released new MacBooks, MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs today. Check ‘em out. The prices seem relatively reasonable to, and if you hunt around on the web page you can find the black (and white) previous generation MacBooks and the old MacBook Pros for substantially reduced prices. This may be a good option for me, despite the fact that the new ones look pretty sweet, especially with the re-designed trackpad and the (supposedly) 5 hour batter life.

Thanks to all of you who humor me on a regular, or not so regular for that matter, basis my blog reached 10,000 hits today. Of course that is transferred over from my old site, and I know that a huge majority of those are accidental clicks, but still, I appreciate all of you that take time to read my thoughts.