The Open Author

Looks like NASA is selling off some of their patents. The first line says, “Congratulations taxpayers! A group of patents developed on your dime by a NASA researcher, sold at public auction last week in a new effort to parlay innovative technology into commercial goods and services.”

I guess this can be seen as good news. On the one hand, NASA has a little bit more money, and they can continue to do cool things. But Darryl Mitchell, a manager at NASA, says the real win is that now these technologies are in the private sector, and they will create jobs and help the economy.

My question is why not release the patents into the public domain? Free the ideas from their shackles, and let anybody play with them. Why not say, “whoever wants to take a crack at this, go ahead. Let the best company win.” Patents just lock things up. A company can buy the patent, and then take their merry time doing whatever it is they want with it. Open source works with software, and now we’re seeing it work with content. It also seems to be working with hardware, as a recent Wired article points out (an article that is not yet online).

So, why are we keeping these innovative ideas, ones that taxpayers have funded, locked up? Which scenario is better for taxpayers and the economy, for one (wealthy) company getting and sitting on the patent, or many different companies competing and fiddling with the ideas and innovations that the patent has locked up? I see more jobs and innovation coming from the latter.

For all of you who laughed at me the other day when I mentioned Warcraft and learning in the same breath, there is a great article over at Inisde Higher Ed. that talks about using fear and humiliation as legitimate teaching aids. A few quotes:

“A 25-person raid is the same size as a class, and like a class its leader can only take it to places places that it is willing to go. Teaching, like learning to down a boss, is about helping people grow their comfort zone by getting them to spend time outside of it. The question is how to push people so that they will be ready to learn, instead of ready to tear their hair out.

“Almost immediately I could see why its members were successful — their raid leader did not pull his punches. In the middle of fight I would hear him saying things like “Xibby, don’t think I don’t see you healing melee — please do your job and focus on the tank.” At times — like when our Paladin failed repeatedly to engage Thaladred the Darkener, who responded by repeatedly blowing up our warlocks — voices were raised.

“A willingness to take risks can also be shored up by commitment and drive. Our guest leader drove my guildies nuts, but impressed me with his professionalism. Does this mean that after graduate school even generous doses of sadism seem unremarkable?”

It’s a very good article, I recommend reading the entire thing.

I have a confession. I hate writing. I really do. It’s difficult, it is time consuming, and I spend most of the day convinced that I’m horrible at it, so why bother in the first place? There are very few redeeming aspects about it. I write because…well, I’m not sure why. I just know I get a story in my head, and it won’t leave me alone until I get it out.

But as much as I dislike the writing process, the process that comes after the book is done is even worse. I am now shopping for an agent/publisher.

Agents and publishers are very nice people. I have nothing against them, at all. But the fact of the matter is that a major portion of their job is to reject people. They have to tell them that they are not interested in representing/publishing their particular story. I know this in my head, but it doesn’t make the process any easier.

For those of you who have never had the lovely opportunity to send off a book to a publisher/agent, let me try to paint you a picture of how it feels.

Imagine you’ve just had a baby. You have carried this baby for 9 months in your womb. The process of carrying and delivering this baby was incredibly difficult. But when you hold the baby for the first time, and you see how beautiful she is, you know it’s all been worth it. The pain, the suffering, the tears, the worry…all worth it.

The nurse comes in, and you hold the baby up so that she can take a good look at her. The morning light shines on your baby, and she coos for the nurse. What a precious baby! What a precious moment!

The nurse glances over and says, “Wow, that is one ugly offspring you’ve got there.”

Yeah, that is exactly how it feels. Right in the gut. Kapow!

Hulu won me over early on, but I’ve come to realize that they have missed the mark. In all fairness, it’s probably not Hulu, rather the suits at the networks.

There is an interesting new show on Hulu called Sons of Anarchy. I saw some ads, so I watched the pilot. Not too bad. I wanted to watch more. Then I notice that they pull down the episodes 22 days after they are put up. So right now you can watch episode 1 & 2, and then it jumps to episode 6. You’re just out of luck for 3-5.

I’d really like to mee the person who made this decision, and ask them why they think it’s a good idea. Because it’s not. There are two outcomes in this scenario.

Outcome #1 – I go to bittorrent and download the missing episodes, and probably the rest of the episodes, just beacuse it’s easy. I get to watch all of them, commercial free.

Outcome #2 – I get discouraged, tell myself I’ll wait until they come out on DVD (Netflix, I never buy), and I may or may not remember to check them out. What will probably happen is I’ll end up never getting around to watching them again. I won’t become a fan of the show, and won’t watch the Hulu version with ads that generate revenue.

Isn’t there data out there that show people still buy DVDs, even if they’ve seen the shows on TV, or watched them on the internet? Or that even if they don’t buy DVDs, doesn’t the ad revenue make up for that? A recent article on wired quotes Hulu as they will “dramatically exceed initial forecasts” regarding revenue.

I am willing to watch commercials to watch TV. I’m not willing to ignore my family at a certain time, and on a certain day, to watch a program. Watching TV when it is broadcast is so 20th century. If I’m in the mood to watch something at 1:39 in the morning, then by golly, I’m going to watch it then, not at 7:30 on a Thursday.

Hulu is close to the mark, but sites like the Pirate Bay will always be there, and will always be a viable alternative, until the Networks understand that they need to give consumers what they want.

I’ve had a twitter account for some time now, but have just started using it. Lots of fun. If you’ve got one, let me know so I can follow you. If you’re so inclined, you can follow me here…

http://twitter.com/firemeboy

The recession is over. That’s right, it’s officially over. Oh sure, you can wait for the Wall Street Journal to call it, but the old media is far too slow. I’m calling the event here, based on a single economic indicator.

I work with a great, albeit shrinking, group of people. Every once in a while the group likes to live high on the hog, and go down to Sam’s club to buy a polish dog combo. Hot dog and soda, $1.62. Can’t beat that deal.

I’ve been trying to lost a bit of weight over the last few months (I’m down 7 pounds and counting), so I usually pass on the meal, but I like to ride with these guys because the conversation is always so stimulating. While they are buying their combos (and after I’ve drunk my strawberry slim fast), I walk around the aisles, performing my ‘hunter gatherer’ routine. I hit every sample station in the place because…well, I have no pride.

That being said, I’ve noticed that the bounteous harvest has been anything less than bounteous, as of late. In fact, at the height of the stock market crash, I went there one day and there were only three sample stations set up. I had to drink a lot of water that day, and eat some grass.

However, today, that has all turned around. Sam’s Club must be on the way up, because this was my hunter gatherer experience today. Behold, the fruit of my labors:

Hot cider
Chicken salad on a club cracker
Meatball dipped in alfredo
Part of a fiber one bar
Black forest ham
Chicken in BBQ sause
Ghirardelli chocolate
Diet juice
Part of a cinnamon roll

Now, you may wonder how I hope to lose weight with all that food, but remember, this comes in servings about the size of a quarter.

If Sam’s Club can afford to put out a spread like this, then you can rest assured, the hard times are almost over.

The following took place on IM:

Mom: “Call us please
Dad: “Lose the phone again?”
Dad: “Calling.”
Mom: “Again, please.”
Dad: “Calling.”
Mom: “Again.”
Dad: “Calling.”
Dad: “Calling again, still no luck?”
Mom: “Got it, we found it hidden in Spencer’s pocket.”
Mom: “No wonder we couldn’t trace the sound, it kept moving.”

As far as I’m concerned, this is great news.

“Google Inc. and five major book publishers have reached an agreement that will allow the search-engine titan to make millions of in- copyright books and other written materials available online.”

For those who read this blog religiously, you’ve known every month or so I go on and on about geo-related content. Organizing content by geographic location, user generated content, linking wikipedia to locations, etc. I’ve been talking about it for years, but since I’m completely impotent when it comes to writing code, I’ve never been able to actually build anything. And never been able to convince anybody that the idea is good enough to invest time/money into it.

Well, now somebody has officially beat me to the punch. A very cool demo over at worldhistory.com, a Utah company. It’s pretty much everything I’ve ever talked about, and I’m excited to get a chance to play with it, once they open it up to the general public.

I ran my first 5k today. However, as it turns out, USU doesn’t know how to measure. It was only about a 4.25 k. My wife, who has been very consistent in her times (within 10 seconds or so), finished the race 7 minutes early. We went to Google maps, and sure enough, the race was way off. We were nowhere close to 5k.

Anyway, I discovered today that I’m a mean person. The race was hard for me because I have only run once in the past month. But I buckled down, and ran the entire 5k…er, 4.25k without stopping to walk. In the final stretch, my wife was about 40 yards ahead of me, and two girls were about 30 yards behind. Well, right at the end I could hear the girls making their move. They were getting closer and closer. I picked up the pace, and so did they. By the very end, they were right behind me, but I managed to stay ahead of them, and finish in front.

It kind of felt good, but then I realized these poor girls had probably said to themselves, ‘let’s beat that guy in the green shirt. They had set a simple goal, and I had to go be a stinker and keep them from achieving that goal. I probably ruined their day. I really felt pretty bad about it, I could have slowed up and let them pass me.

So there you have it, revelation of the night. I’m a stinker.

But, I’m no longer angry. The final play was tonight. And I will miss it.