Fair Use Is Fair To Whom?

Wired Magazine provides more depth to the Tech Bubble 2 video debate and gives some voice to the other side of the issue in two articles.

Copyright Claim Erases Parody Video From YouTube | The Underwire from Wired.com

Why Lane Hartwell Popped the 'Here Comes Another Bubble' Video

This seems to be one of the most important issues facing the Internet today. It is far easier to cry "Fair Use" when its a multi-million dollar media firm stopping the use but if its a solitary artist the same principle is not quite as easy to apply. The fact that Lane Hartwell as let this be known before should have least given some pause to using her work. Though, despite not being a lawyer, I have to question if the parody needs to be direct or the picture only needs to be used in the creation of parody.

However, if it is truly parody, then Richter Scales should fight to get it put back on. If it is not parody and fair use does not apply then Richter Scales should apologize and edit the picture out of the video. How hard can that be? There is no easy answer though. The question is not merely a personal one between parties though as this Slashdot articles informs us Slashdot | Fair Use Worth More Than Copyright To Economy. Personally I could serve on a jury for this as I can see both sides of the argument, though you will notice I am keeping the video up so that could disqualify me. The three articles are being added to the "What Is Civic Media and Fair Use?".

Buddhist Thought of the Day on 12/14/07

Buddhist Thought of the Day on 12/14/07

You are now in control of your life. You see, the ego is never in
control. The ego is controlled by wishes for comfort and convenience
on the part of the body, by demands of the mind, and by outbursts of
the emotions. But the higher nature controls the body and the mind and
the emotions. I can say to my body, "Lie down there on that cement
floor and go to sleep," and it obeys. I can say to my mind, "Shut out
everything else and concentrate on this job before you," and it's
obedient. I can say to my emotions, "Be still, even in the face of
this terrible situation," and they are still. It's a different way of
living. The philosopher Thoreau wrote: If a man does not keep pace
with his companions, perhaps he hears a different drummer. And now you
are following a different drummer--the higher nature instead of the
lower. - Peace Pilgrim...

Tagging, De-Tagging Deciding Which System Is Best

Still working on the tagging or to be more accurate de-tagging. My last few posts have been on design. A close review again demonstrated that sometimes tags were assigned without much thought. There could still be arguments as to my choices and I still need to create some one-size-fits-all definition on diigo for design and creativity to cover the different links which seems no easy task. I had originally linked to my del.icio.us account but then realized that anybody else would not be able to directly access my links specifically tagged design. Still have to decide if ma.gnolia and blink are worth keeping. Diigo allows me to update all of the tagging systems with new tags at the same time but changes or deletes still seem to need to be done at each system.

Free Rice and Webslides

FreeRice: Banners

I have been playing around with the bells, whistles and widgets that make up this weblog. That is one of the basic reasons for creating this experiment in the first place. One new item combines a desire to find out if Web 2.0 can really be of any benefit and how. The answer is simple. This is about as simple as you can get and it helps make you smarter as the same time. What's to lose?

Also experimenting with diigo webslides. I like the look, I only wish that one slide projector could load up more than one list so the users could change it they wished to. Both Free Rice and the webslides are at the left-hand column.

Secrets Of Movement Mysteries Of Design

This is the post that was intentionally moved and fixed with the post below. A second look at the TED video convinced me to place it up front in the main section of this weblog. As I said below this post is also being placed under the tag design. Robert Full does incorporate functionality into design. His approach struck me as being a combination of J. Craig Venter and Saul Griffith. This also leads back to my burgeoning concept of intentional personal paradigm shift. While Maira Kalman seemed to fit without doubt under the tag creativity, this post seems better fitted to innovation though sometimes its hard to determine the difference, both provided inspiration.

Biologist Robert Full shares his fascination with spiny cockroach legs that allow them to scuttle at full speed across loose mesh and gecko feet that have billions of nano-bristles to run straight up walls. His talk, complete with wonderful slow-mo video of cockroach, crab and gecko gaits, explains his goal of creating the perfect robotic "distributed foot." (Recorded February 2005 in Monterey, California. Duration: 19:24.)

This one went under Paradigm Pathways Science Pathways.

Principles of Uncertainty Laws of Serendipity

This post was moved to here from back in November unintentionally. I was intentionally moving the post above this. However, embedding the video for the later post wasn't working and I used this video to edit so that it would. Regardless of that accident, these two posts do tie together under a tag that also has a wide and varied application - design. Originally I did not tag this post under design but I am rethinking that now. The concept of design has changed for me as a result of this weblog more than any other concept that has been dealt with, both in terms of its importance and its intricacy. I am no longer applying the concept of design only to things, particularly to only inanimate things.

The Principles of Uncertainty starts one off on a strange journey starting in the past, both in terms of the work and of Maira Kalman's life, and moving with uncertainty but also serendipity with no particular place to go. Maira Kalman doesn't bring functionality to design, she brings style.

Macro-Economics and Sex

The podcasts on Macro-Economics from University of California Berkeley have been explaining the Solow Growth Model created by Robert Solow. You have to like a Nobel prize winning economist who comes up with a line like,

"Everything reminds Milton Friedman of the money supply. Everything reminds me of sex, but I try to keep it out of my papers."

Using the Google Search box within Marginal Revolution, this weblog's favorite economics blog, gets a number of hits on either Robert Solow or his model, including Solow on Schumpeter whose ideas on creative-destruction have been discussed before.

In looking for more information on Robert Solow at Marginal Revolution, I ran across a post on Rodrik vs. Stiglitz, that's Professor Randi Rodrick and Professor Joseph Stiglitz. I know I said I was cutting down on the comments until I got a bit more knowledge under my belt regarding the dismal science but I couldn't resist leaving one, especially since this weblog had featured Professor Stiglitz previously. Since I said that I appreciated many of Professor Cowen's ideas on globalization, here is a link to some of those ideas - Creative Destruction: How Globalization Is Changing the World's Cultures.

Nature Is Better At Balancing Complex Systems Than We Are

"When Removing One Predator Harms the Prey" - New York Times: By HENRY FOUNTAIN Published: December 11, 2007

This article makes a good point regarding thinking about long term impact and the complexity of interrelated systems.

"The predator-prey relationship is simple, right? If a predator is around, that is bad for the prey, and if the predator is removed, that is good for the prey."

"Ecological theory, however, suggests that isn’t always the case, particularly if there is more than one predator species around and they share the same prey. In that case, elimination of the top predator may allow the midlevel predator to thrive, and a result may actually be worse for the prey."

The New England Complex Systems Institute, which is one of the web pages saved under del.icio.us and other tagging systems, has a fascinating visualization of a related system model. You will need Quicktime. Spatial Predator-Prey Models and the Evolution of Altruism. The use of such systems will, to my mind, undoubtedly increase, both as a means of understanding challenges in the future as well as overcoming those challenges and mitigating the impacts.

The New England Complex Systems Institute was featured in a previous post and placed under Paradigm Pathways Science Pathways. The researchers had created a mathematical model - based purely on the geographic distribution of ethnic groups - that provided a highly accurate prediction of where violent conflict would occur regarding Inter-ethnic violence using the same rules for prediction that govern chemicals.

Four Step Paradigm Shift

Lately the number of personal paradigms posts have exceeded both posts on web 2.0 and economics, the former first place. They are still in the mix but they haven't been front and center for awhile. Part of the reason is that I am spending more time listening and reading about web 2.0 and economics than writing posts about them. There are still, however, a number of issues and items of interest that I want to put on to this pages, especially some of the science articles and a number of MIT World videos.

Right now though, there have been a number of insightful and interesting articles directly appealing to my ongoing efforts to initiate some personal paradigm shifts for my next life transition - semi-retirement - within the next four or so years. In particular, another inspirational post found on The Entrepreneurial Mind concerning More on Passion in Business. Professor Cornwall again introduces us to Sam Davidson.

Sam Davidson has a nice follow-up piece to my post the other day on passion at his blog site CoolPeopleCare. He offers a thoughtful four step process that takes you from dreams to passion, from passion to plans, from plans to action, and from action back to dreams.

A quick search of Google search engine and Google Reader demonstrates that Mr. Davidson is a pretty impressive person. I am not saying this just because he doubled my Technorati authority for me. At twenty-six he is half my age, but has effectively combined web 2.0 skills and being an agent for social change through a number of different venues in ways so that I see him as weekend duffers see Tiger Woods. I get the sense that this is his daytime/real world "job" or that he doesn't sleep. If the Sam Davidsons are taking over the world then I don't have any worries.

I particularly liked his concept of the four step/year process from dream to action

The Four-Step Process

• That dream develops a passion.
  
• The passion develops a plan.
  
• The plan determines the action.
  
• The action helps us to dream better.

So currently I am at step one.

Year One: Dream while learning the ropes

The great thing about dreaming is that you can do it where you are. If you’re fresh out of college, you can dream about your memories and how they can become your passions. Or, if you’re part of a huge company, you can dream on the job.

If you are on the job, you’ll also have a chance to pick up some skills that will come in handy during step three: the planning phase. So, soak up all you can – you never know when learning how to read a financial statement, how to manage your time, and how to navigate a competitive market will benefit you in the long run.

When I was a small cog in a big machine for my first stint out of college, learning to read the financials and finding the proper price point were two skills I didn’t learn with my history major, but badly needed when starting my own business.

I am at the early stages of learning and experimenting, having already re-invented this wheel three times, by the end of a year I should have collected and learned to use a number of web resources. As this is more experimental for me and though I am not actively seeking an audience, I am trying out different web tools like Hightail.com and Feedburner. My high for Feedburner subscribers under my previous version was 14. Having dropped to zero, I am now back up to nine. I think that is cool. A year from now who knows?

Tech Bubble Burst and Blown Again

This was originally from Businesspundit and as rob says, "Its Fantastic" Unfortunately it stopped working. Same with a number of other sites that featured the video. Undaunted, I found it again at Marketing Pilgrim. This time instead of using YouTube the video is under Metacafe.



Here Comes Another Bubble - video powered by Metacafe

Here is why it stopped working on YouTube. This came from NewTeeVee and was posted by Liz Gannes.

Which happens to be one of those topics I have been wanting to get back to write about. What is Civic Media? is another Ask.com web-available folder that contains a number of different webpages on this particular subject. Despite my new found fondness for del.icio.us, I still, conceptually, like the idea of having a repository or file folder for a set of related webpages. I know that at a certain level there isn't that much difference but having it all together under one title with a specific purpose still appeals to me. My "Generation Jones" side overshadowing my fletching "Generation X" side. The main link that caught my interest in the folder is MIT World » What is Civic Media? The latest to be added was TED | TEDBlog: How creativity is being strangled by the law: Larry Lessig.

Knowing Its A Rose By Any Other Name Doesn't Make You A Horticulturist

Businesspundit: Management by Semantics

Businesspundit had an interesting post that is applicable both the my recent posting on tagging or labeling and to business communication. It also mentions Richard Feynman, who is one of my favorite people.

Richard Feynman's father told him an interesting story about words and meanings:
See that bird? It's a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it's called a halzenfugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird. You only know something about people; what they call the bird.

In Rob's perspective the problem with many in business today is that,
"They know business ideas in the sense that they know what they are called, and what their definitions are, but they really don't understand them. They can't explain them or apply them. "

"Thinking that you know and understand something when you really only know what it is called is exactly the type of thing that gets incompetent people promoted. And it's probably more dangerous than not knowing the terminology in the first place."

Language has been another topic of interest for this weblog. This post brings its proper application a bit closer to the street and everyday use. Its hard enough to communicate when your face to face with someone and have that other 80% of communication through body and eyes to fall back on, but when your communicating across continents and cultures the challenge is even greater. There is still that danger of getting sucked in by those who sound or look like experts but are all veneer and no substance. On the other hand, if you do manage to develop some substance then how do you make sure it gets through all the other flash on the web?

Beauty & Truth Is The Essence Of The Universe

Paradigm Pathways Science

Beauty and truth in physics: Murray Gell-Mann on TED.com

What is especially striking and remarkable is that
in fundamental physics
a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right
than a theory that is inelegant.

Balance Is Input = Output for So Many Things In Life

Besides finding Holy Life of the Intellect during my del.icio.us clean-up, I also found a number of very interesting sites that I had discovered but not followed up on. My del.icio.us holdings are starting to go beyond my current mental capacity in breadth and depth, though that is part of reason for doing this. I am like the proverbial kid in the candy store stuffing handfuls so deep in the pockets but there is just too much and it just gets stuck there. Since I don't really write about anything in particular means I can end up trying to write about everything that comes across my plate.

So what comes across my plate. Today I went through about 600 articles on the Google Reader I was behind on. Just tossed the majority of the with Wired articles bringing it down to 300 or so. Sped through the majority of the remainder finding about 30 worth further consideration but still have about 80 Marginal Revolution posts which I find myself unable to speed through at quite the same pace. My problem is not wanting to miss something interesting. Having found something interesting I find myself wanting to write about it as though that will help to incorporate it within myself. Particularly if I see it as something that will assist in my quest to redefine myself for my post retirement career. So the only answer to not getting bogged down and keeping that balance of life I have been posting about is to limit the number of posts I try to do in a week or reading faster. Of course, there is still those 54 webpages stored in Ask.com MyStuff saved results that I want to get through.

Getting One's On-line House In Order

I did another pass through of my del.icio.us tags cleaning out tags and websites that were not serving any real purpose. For some reason my personal psychological make-up doesn't like the idea of a personal web storage dump.

Still trying to determine the proper relationship of tags to each other especially "paradigms" which I gave my own egoistic definition. Basically those sites that embody the concept of implementing intentional change for the better in ones life and in the world. Sounds good but it is personally limited and not particularly precise being redefined with each new discovery. However I was able to apply a new tag "social-entrepreneurship" to a number of previously tagged websites by selecting for "development" +"paradigms" which provided me those website that I had found as stellar examples of social-entrepreneurship. Again, however, the definition is loose and vague.

There is still the philosophical question raised by Professor Jeff Cornwall is social-entrepreneurship just plain old entrepreneurship? From a real world getting the job done perspective I lean towards yes but from a keeping track of a thousand different websites out there the more specific tag is of great use.

So now its a matter of re-loading blinklist, ma.gnolia and diigo.

Finding The Style For A Sucessful Career (Or Two)

Successful Career Entrepreneur Style via The Entrepreneurial Mind on 11/30/07, again stresses, as from from a previous post, what Professor Cornwall calls, "the importance of engineering personal goals and aspirations into entrepreneurs' business models. This includes both financial goals (income and wealth) and personal non-financial goals."

He provides an example of an entrepreneur featured in at Career Journal who found the balance she was seeking between work and family, be it either just starting or empty-nest.

"In a culture obsessed with profit and growth, how do you curb the growth of a successful start-up to preserve time with your spouse and new baby?"

"For Brenda Thompson, who started the business of her dreams only months before having her first baby, the answer is to ignore the siren song of expansion and keep the business small. Her story shows how taking the long view can pay off."

First the Wind-Up Then The Pitch

Making the Pitch advices The Entrepreneurial Mind on 12/3/07 is one of the most daunting challenges for entrepreneurs. To help, he provides a link to Suite101.com , which he calls,

"a nice summary of what it takes to make an effective pitch under pressure."

"When they have to make a pitch for their business. It might directed to a potential investor, a banker, that first customer -- or in some cases to their spouse! This pitch has taken on the nickname of the elevator pitch, as you often have only a very short time to get your message across (imagine a short ride in an elevator with the investor before he or she has to get off on their floor)."

I would call it practicing on-the-spot concise thinking.

Passion Is For Life All Of It

Is Passion for Your Business Enough?, asks The Entrepreneurial Mind on 12/4/07

Professor Jeff Cornwall of the Belmont University Center for Entrepreneurship advises that,

"Indeed, a good business model is never enough to carry you through the adversity and tough times that entrepreneurs almost always will face in their new ventures."

He also points out that passion is a popular topic in the business literature these days. Introducing us to the About.com article, The Mid-Life Challenge: Make a Plan to Re-ignite Career Passion. Experts encourage us to to seek a career path that "ignites our passion" and gives our life meaning. Now this has been one of the main topics of interest for this weblog. Similar to my readings of Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends even though I am not an entrepreneur I still find a good deal of value in what Entrepreneurial Mind has to offer.

Professor Cornwall doesn't however just leave it there, providing some very good advice through what he calls, this part of the "me" part of assessing opportunities. often write about. This process of assessment brings him to the following insightful conclusion.

"But I have some concern that many are taking the importance of passion and meaning too far -- to an almost unhealthy extreme. If unchecked, seeking meaning for your life from your business can lead to the kind of workaholism that many had hoped to avoid with an entrepreneurial career."

He then asks a question that focuses on self-definition.

"What do farmers do? They farm. What do designers do? They design. What do managers do? They manage. What do entrepreneurs do? Well, they.....

His point is being an entrepreneur or for me change agent has no simple verb to describe it. It becomes a matter of who one is not what one does, but it can become a limiting definition.

"Careers can do this to us. If we are not careful, they can consume all that we are. And what gets lost? Our families, our friendships, and even our souls."

"If we are to become all that we were put on this Earth to do, we have to temper the temptation to become consumed by our work. We need to resist becoming the noun of what we do for a living."

• Work hard at being a spouse.
• Work hard at being a parent.
• Work hard at worshiping God (Buddha, Allah or your choice of spiritual truth- mine).
• Work hard at being a friend.
• Work hard at being a good citizen in your community.
• And yes, work hard at your vocation.

None of these alone can fulfill our humanness.

This is just a summary from my perspective. The original post is well worth reading.