Garrick van Buren – Page 70 – About time. And product. And being more deliberate.

Terms of Services Kinda Like Open Licenses – But Evil

The Combined Arms Research Library has a good post on the upside of the latest version of Twitter’s terms of service (“Twitter can do WHAT with your photos?“) .

The language is very similar to the MIT/X11 License in that the copyright holder is licensing their work to others and the licensees can do as they wish with the work – adapt, distribute, sell, etc. In the case of the MIT/X11 – those freedoms apply to everyone. In the case of Twitter’s Terms of Service – it’s just, um, Twitter Corp.

Yes, Facebook’s, Blogger’s, TypePad’s, WordPress.com’s, Tumblr’s, Posterous’s, and many others‘ terms of service all have similar language.

It’d be far more interesting, innovative, and plain simpler, if the lawyers at these services declared anything published through them was automatically licensed under a more well-known license like the MIT/X11, GPL, or Creative Commons. That license change would also be a boon for the driving creative innovation around that work and become a magnet for people interested in publishing under these open terms. Instead, it feels like these services are trying to get away with stealing.

While music and book publishers are being chastised for crazy low royalty rates – social networks have eliminated them completely and are praised for their innovativeness.

Rightfully so – they’ve attracted millions of creators and eliminated both the advance to create the work and the royalties on its commercial usage.

Elsewhere:

“We tend to like the primary uses of that data (Amazon book recommendations), it’s the secondary uses we’re not so crazy about (third-party datamines sold to anyone for anything).” – Bruce Schneier, DefCon 15, 2007

“Any smart CEO would kill to have a product like you that doesn’t cost anything and keeps renewing itself indefinitely so it can be sold and resold and resold to many different customers.” – Jacques Vallee

Fermenting: Abbey Cyser

4 Gallons of Apple Cider from Hy’s Cider Mill purchased from Whole Foods in St. Paul
2.5 pounds of honey from Pine Tree Apple Orchard
1 package of WYeast Trappist High Gravity 3787

According to the package, the yeast like it between 70-75°F. To accommodate it, I combined the cider and honey into my boil pot on a low flame just until I got a read of 75°F. Then I siphoned it into the carboy, shook up the yeast package well for good luck, and pitched.

Fermentation started nearly immediately and has been going strong for 20 hours.

Once primary fermentation stops, I’m planning to put it in the secondary until Thanksgiving.

I picked up the honey on a lark visiting Pine Tree Orchard a few weeks back. It wasn’t until I got home that I decided to make a cyser with it. The cider was the only cider I could find (without going back to Pine Tree) lacking preservatives [1]. Whole Food’s price per gallon was less then I was quoted from local orchards – and they gave me a discount for buying so much. The yeast choice was easy. As you may know, I’m a big fan of Belgian beers and the cyser has the potential to get north of 10% ABV, so the yeast designed for Belgian doubles and triples was the only choice.

Unlike beer brewing, putting this cyser together was very relaxing and un-messy (primarily because there’s not 3+ gallons of wort threatening to boil over for an hour). I’m only hoping this is as delicious as Crispin’s The Saint.

Update 25 Oct 2010
By all signs, the fermentation stopped today and I moved the cyser to the secondary. Along the way, I split it in two, and dry hopped one half with ~2oz of Yakima Magnum hops. Midwest Supplies’ says the hops have an aroma of black pepper, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Sounds like they were grown for a cyser.

Update 30 Oct 2010
I bottled both batches today – with priming sugars. At this point, the non-hopped half is quite enjoyable, with the hopped-half being a bit much. Though – both are very drinkable. First bottle gets opened on Thanksgiving.

1. If you have any ideas on how to resurrect yeast in a pool of sodium benzoate-laced cider – I’m all ears. 🙂

Progressive

“We are deeply in a situation in which the few are supporting the many: the bottom 50% of income earners paid only 2.7% of total income taxes in 2008, and 52 million taxpayers paid no income taxes at all” – Scott Grannis

Trade Perspectives

“Total U.S. trade with the rest of the world (sales of U.S. products to consumers and firms in other countries PLUS purchases of foreign production by American consumers and businesses) reached a 22-month high of $354.1 billion in August, the highest level since October 2008, and 44% above the April 2009 cyclical low of $246 billion (see chart above).” – Mark J. Perry

I HAZ FAIL! – Oct 20, 2010 @ 7pm

Next Wednesday – Oct 20th @ 7pm – I’ll be giving a talk on failure to the Lean Startup Circle group.

If you’re interested in how I define success and failure for the projects I so frequently talk about here join me. I’ll be discussing these projects; their opportunity, challenges, brief success, and their ultimate fatal flaw.

RSVP & more info here http://www.meetup.com/Twin-Cities-Lean-Startup-Circle

Cracked

“If your genius lies in some kind of creative field, then there’s a good chance you have actual mental illness to deal with” – By Elizabeth Benefiel, David Wong

Naturally

“Natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature (from Latin philosophia naturalis), is a term applied to the study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science. It is considered to be the precursor of natural sciences such as physics.” – Wikipedia

It seems significant that Western culture’s first word for ‘scientist’ was ‘natural philosopher’ – a phrase assuming unknown unknowns exist but doesn’t express the ambition to know them. Whereas ‘scientist’ as a term feels like there are knowns and there are unknowns, and we’re compelled to reduce the unknowns.

Minnesota’s Startup Scene in Twin Cities Business Magazine

‘Saving Innovation’ – Dan Haugen’s article on our vibrant meet-up scene and how it supports innovation & entrepreneurship was published in the October 2010 issue of Twin Cities Business Magazine.

Dan did a great job on the topic – with quotes from some of my favorite people in town as well as yours truly.

The article concludes with a nice quote from CoCoMSP‘s Don Ball that I think applies to MN’s entrepreneur culture as a whole – not just the social aspects of it.

“We don’t have to wait for some authority group or figure to tell us that we’re going to have a conference or a meeting or support group. We all have the tools to decide we’re going to do it ourselves.”

Top 9 Things I Want In a Blog Engine

self-hosted
easily template-able
easily customizable
supports email-to-post
supports XML-RPC
supports RSS output
internal search engine
an writing UI encouraging writing 200+ words at a time
an reading UI encouraging reading 2+ essays at a time

Update 11 Oct 2010
Add these to the list;

memorable, human-readable URL constructs
doesn’t bias how or what I publish

If You’re Going To Accomplish One Thing Today

Stick your head out the window and yell.

Bonus: A super fun Kleptones mashup with Howard Beale [mp3]

Update 13 Oct 2010:
My favorite line from the monologue:

“You people are the real thing, we’re the illusion.”