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2010 November

ccNewsletter: Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Wants You to Support CC!

Allison Domicone, November 9th, 2010

Our fall fundraising campaign is fully underway, and we'd like to start off this month's newsletter by encouraging all of you who use or support Creative Commons to donate today so we can continue to provide you with great tools for sharing and remixing on the web!

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Hindawi wants to double your donation! What are you waiting for?

Allison Domicone, November 9th, 2010

Hindawi, open access scholarly journal publisher, wants to double your donation to Creative Commons! Starting right now, Hindawi is matching every dollar of the next $3000 given to CC. That means if you donate $10, $25, $75 to CC right now, your impact will be automatically doubled thanks to Hindawi. Judging by how fast we met wikiHow’s challenge a couple weeks ago, you should donate quick to make sure your gift gets doubled!

Here’s why Hindawi has chosen to support us this year and why they’re challenging you to join them in giving to CC:

“As an open access journal publisher we believe that it is important for our readers to be comfortable reusing and redistributing our articles without fear of violating any copyright restrictions, and Creative Commons licenses make it clear to readers what they can do with our content.”

Join Hindawi in supporting CC and have your donation automatically doubled. If you’ve haven’t yet given to our fundraising campaign (or even if you already have!), now is your chance. It’s easy, and you’re just a few clicks away from showing the world you care about an open, sharing online (and offline) world.

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Meet our board members: Jimmy Wales

Lisa Katayama, November 9th, 2010

Meet Creative Commons board member Jimmy Wales. You probably know him best as the founder of Wikipedia. Here, he talks to us about the importance of Creative Commons, why fundraising is hard, and his crazy travel schedule.

Why are you on the CC board?

As the founder of Wikipedia, I am very aware of the importance of thoughtful licensing regimes for creators of content who want to share it with others. We live in an era in which it is really easy for people to share knowledge. Without a legal framework that allows them to do so in the ways that they want, we won’t realize the full benefits of this era.

Why do you support CC and why do you use it on your sites?

I have always been a fan of CC’s approach as a “middle way.” For a long time, we were stuck in a debate about copyright that focused only on two categories of people: the creators who want to maintain their work under traditional copyright, and the “pirates” who want to steal that work and undermine it. What was lost in that dialogue first became obvious in the world of free, open source software: many people are creators but aren’t interested in, nor helped by, traditional copyright. CC recognized that the solutions being created in the world of software had broader applicability to culture.

What, in your opinion, are the challenges that lie ahead for CC?

Billions of people benefit in some way from the work of Creative Commons, but I fear that it is too often overlooked because the work is by nature free of charge, and because it is “infrastructure.”

At Wikipedia, we are able to fund-raise directly from small donors because we are huge, public, and visible, and our community builds something that everyone uses every day. With Wikipedia, we can always know that there will be lots and lots of $30 donors from the heart and soul of the Wikipedia donor community.  It’s harder for Creative Commons.

I’m a donor to Creative Commons, and I encourage other people to be donors as well.  Creative Commons will always have a smaller group of donors, but one that digs deeper because they know how important the work is.

I know you mentioned below that you travel a lot… what’s your daily life like? What are you traveling for? We’d love to get a glimpse of a day in the life of Jimmy Wales!

I’m writing to you from a plane, of course. :)  I’m not so sure I can explain a “typical day” for me because every day is different.  I’m on my way home to Florida now, and then next week I’m off on one of my maddening multiple-continent journeys.

I’m about to do this:

Tampa->London->Hong Kong->Mumbai->Toronto->Basel->Tampa.

I count 5 changes of continents in there… in 9 days!

Join Jimmy Wales in showing that you care about Creative Commons by donating to CC today.

IMAGE: Lane Hartwell on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation

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Creative Commons Communities Shine in Middle East

Donatella Della Ratta, November 8th, 2010

CC communities throughout the Arab World displayed their rich culture and commitment to openness this past week in Lebanon and Qatar, showcasing creative works, inter-regional collaboration, and a focused dedication on legal and copyright issues in the region. Following the Digitally Open conference in Doha and a regional meeting including members of CC’s communities in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria and UAE, Creative Commons co-founder Lawrence Lessig and CC CEO Joichi Ito visited Beirut for the official launch of the Creative Commons Lebanon project.

On October 25, the American University in Beirut hosted artists, young creators, and students from the Olayan Business School and warmly welcomed Lessig’s presentation on “What is CC meant for?” and Ito’s “Innovation in open networks.” Those inspired talks and Q&A sessions were followed by a presentation by Naeema Zarif on “Common people,” a comic-style pop presentation of Lebanese CC community activities made in cooperation with Samandal‘s Fadi Baki. These works are released under Creative Commons licenses, as is the work of comic artist Maya Zankoul, photographer Lara Zankoul, singer and podcaster Tony Yammine, social media expert Darine Sabbagh, media training and consulting NGO Social Media Exchange, and many many others from the extremely active Lebanese CC community.

CC Fellow Ayah Bdeir and VJ CelineCeline, with the help of entrepreneur Habib Haddad, organized the second CC Salon in Beirut. The cozy Karaj, Ayah’s newly opened space for events and gatherings, also hosted a talk by Freesouls‘ artist Chris Adams and a DJ set by Fabricatorz founder and CC fellow Jon Phillips.

On October 26, the Lebanese Bar Association featured a talk by Lessig which framed Creative Commons in the broader context of copyright. The talk was attended by more than 600 members of the Bar, was broadcast live by Al Jazeera and covered by many Lebanese media, including Future TV, As-Safir newspaper and Al Akhbar, which publishes its online content under a CC NC-ND license.

Congratulations to all of our community members and leads from the region, including Pierre al Khoury from La Sagesse University in Beirut, Mohammed Darwish, a lawyer specialized in IP and a volunteer for Consumers International Lebanon, and Tony Feghali, head of the Olayan Business School at the American University of Beirut for making these these events happen. And thanks to the broader CC community in Lebanon for being creative and proactive within the broader fast growing CC Arab world network. Look for updates from the CC regional meeting in Qatar shortly.

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Big thank you to Squidoo!

Melissa Reeder, November 8th, 2010

We’re thrilled to announce a $15,000 gift from Squidoo, the popular publishing platform that allows you to create and share content with the world. So why are they supporting CC? Seth Godin, Squidoo’s Founder says:

Creative Commons is doing something incredibly difficult and valuable: they are changing expectations. Before CC, the default mode for everything was to lock it up, forever, in a way that cripples the community. With CC, the new default is to share unless there’s a good reason not to. And sharing is our future.

We couldn’t agree more. Join Seth in supporting CC and making sure fair sharing is our future.

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CC Talks With: Flat World Knowledge’s Eric Frank: Open Education and Policy

Timothy Vollmer, November 4th, 2010

At the beginning of this year we announced a revised approach to our education plans, focusing our activities to support of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement. In order to do so we have worked hard to increase the amount of information available on our own site – in addition to an Education landing page and the OER portal explaining Creative Commons’ role as legal and technical infrastructure supporting OER, we have been conducting a series of interviews to help clarify some of the challenges and opportunities of OER in today’s education landscape.

One major venue for the advancement of OER is through the development and support of businesses that levage openly licensed content in support of education. Eric Frank is Founder and President of Flat World Knowledge, a commercial publisher of openly-licensed college textbooks. We spoke with Eric about faculty perceptions of open textbooks, customization enabled by open licensing, and the future of “free online and affordable offline” business models.

Eric Frank by Flat World Knowledge / CC BY

Why did you start Flat World Knowledge and how did you decide to approach this business using open content?

My co-founder Jeff Shelstad and I come out of a long history in textbook publishing. We left a major textbook publisher because of what we perceived as exceedingly-high dissatisfaction levels among the primary constituents in that market—students, faculty and authors. These groups were scratching their heads wondering if the print-based business model was going to be able to serve them going forward. When we began thinking about how to build a new business model, we didn’t actually know that much about open educational resources and open licensing. We started to bake a business model based on bringing prices down and increasing access for students; giving faculty more control over the teaching and learning experience; and providing a healthier and more sustainable income stream for authors. And then we started to meet people in the open community. We spoke to Open Education scholar and advocate David Wiley (and Flat World’s Chief Openness Officer) who said, “It’s funny, you sound a lot like me, except we use different words.” This pushed us a little bit further. Ultimately, through a very pragmatic approach to solving real problems that customers were facing, we arrived at this open textbook model.

The cost of textbooks is something that’s very tangible to students. Flat World Knowledge recently released information that 800 colleges will utilize Flat World open textbooks this fall semester, saving 150,000 students $12 million in textbook expenses. And, the Student PIRGs’ recent report A Cover to Cover Solution: How Open Textbooks Are The Path To Textbook Affordability found that adopting open textbooks could reduce textbook costs by 80%–to $184 per year, compared to the average of $900. Beyond the important outreach on cost savings, what are the primary questions you hear from faculty and students around “open”?

For the most part, when the average faculty member hears “open textbook,” it means nothing to them. In some cases, it has a positive connotation, and in other cases, it’s negative. When it’s negative, the primarily concern is one of basic quality and sustainability. Faculty question the entities making these open textbooks, and wonder whether the textbooks could be worth their salt if they’re available for free under an open license. And of course, they confuse ‘free’ and ‘open’ all the time. “If it’s free,” educators say, “It can’t be good. What author would ever do that?” Sometimes we see the opposite problem, such as when people know a little something about the publishing ecosystem and say, “It’s too good to be true.”

Through our marketing programs, we spend a lot of time educating faculty that we are a professional publisher, and that we focus on well-known scholars and successful textbook authors. We start by talking about what’s not different from the traditional approach: we sign experienced authors to write textbooks for us, and we develop the books by providing editorial resources, peer reviewing, and investment. The end product is a high-quality textbook and teaching package. There’s a real focus and emphasis on quality. What we change is how we distribute, how we price, and how we earn our revenue. We walk faculty through this process and let them know that ‘open’ is just about loosening copyright restrictions so that they can do more with the textbooks. We explain that free access is about getting their students onto a level playing field. We explain that affordable choices is about making sure students get the format and price that works for them. Once faculty understand these things and are reassured that we have a quality process in place, and that we are a real and sustainable enterprise that will be around to support them in the future, then it all starts to come together. We have to overcome either a total void of knowledge, which we prefer, or some other baggage that they carry into the conversation.

Customizability of digital textbooks is a key feature of Flat World Knowledge, enabled by the open license. How do teachers and students use this feature? And, how is Flat World’s approach to remix different than other platforms and services that allow some adaptability of content without actually using open content as the base?

Of course, the license itself carries its own rights and permissions. People are able to do a lot more with open content than they can with all rights reserved materials. We keep building out our technology platform so that it ultimately enables faculty to take full advantage of that open license—to do all the things that educators might want to do to improve the quality of the material for their own purposes. Today, the most popular customization is relatively simple. For example, educators reorganize the table of contents by dragging and dropping textbook chapters into the right order for their class, and delete a few things they don’t cover. This is easy and helps them match the book to their syllabus.

Then you move into exploring other areas. For example, instructors may want to make the textbook more pedagogically aligned with their teaching style. In that case, a teacher might integrate a short case study and a series of questions alongside the textbook content. Teachers may want to make the references and examples more relevant to their students by using the names of local companies. Timeliness is certainly important—something happens in the world and educators want to be able to integrate it into their teaching materials.

Educators have different teaching styles and approaches too. An adopter of one of our economics textbooks swapped out some models for other economic models that he prefers to use. An adopter at the University of New Hampshire added several chapters on sustainability and corporate social responsibility into an introduction to business book. Now, he’s teaching the course through his prism and from his perspective. These are the kinds of things that people want to be able to do. The critical thing for us is to make the platform easy to use so that customizing a book is as effortless as opening up a Word document, making some changes, saving it, and delivering it to students.

Regarding how our approach differs from other platforms and services because we begin with openly-licensed content, at one level, the ability to take something and modify it is largely a technology question. We go further, and allow people to edit text at the word level. You don’t see this sort of framework in other services because most of the time you’re dealing with the all rights reserved mentality. Most authors sign up to write traditional textbooks with the understanding that, “This is my work and you can’t do stuff with it.” I think the first big difference is when the author says, “I want people to be able to do stuff with this.” Having authors enter into a different publishing relationship by using open licenses allows us to go much further with the platform. That said, there’s nothing really stopping another company from doing this with some kind of unique user license.

We see other benefits of open access when we think about outputs. You might be able to go onto a publisher’s site and make modifications to a text, and maybe even integrate something that’s openly-licensed on the Web. But ultimately, it’s going to get subsumed into the all rights reserved framework, and won’t propagate forward, so no one else can change it. And generally, these digital services are expensive and access expires after a few months, so the user no longer can get to the content. Things like digital rights management and charging high prices for print materials are fundamentally business model decisions around dissemination, but they’re important.

I think the other big difference is what can happen away from the Flat World Knowledge site. Somebody could arguably come in and take our content and do something with it somewhere else. We’re not locking it down and saying, “The only thing you can do is work with the content on our site, and only use our technology.” We happen to make it easy to do this sort of thing on the Flat World site, but the open license allows others to use the content away from the original website. This leads to many more options that aren’t possible with content that is all rights reserved or served under a very unique license.

Flat World Knowledge licenses its textbooks under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license. What were the considerations in choosing this license? How do you see the role of Creative Commons in open textbook and open education?

One of my pet peeves about this community that we’re a part of is the frequent and sometimes contentious debates over licensing. The principle of enabling a range of licenses recognizes that copyright holders have different objectives for their creations. I have my objectives and you have yours, so we may choose different licenses to reach those objectives. That’s perfectly fine. This is the way the world should be. For us, the choice of a license was very much predicated on building a sustainable commercial model around open. We invest fairly heavily with financial resources, time, and intellectual capital to make these textbooks and related products something that we think can dominate in the marketplace. If we didn’t use the non-commercial condition, in our view, we’d be making all the investment and then someone else could sell the content at a dramatically lower price because they didn’t make the initial and ongoing investment. The non-commercial condition is the piece of the model that enables us to give users far more rights, to provide free points of access, and protect our ability to commercialize the investment we made. The ShareAlike clause ensures that this protection continues forward.

Our decision to use this license also relates to authors. The sustainability and financial success argument starts with the people who have the most value in the market: the authors who create the books. Our discussions with authors always include a financial component. They want to know how we are going to capitalize on this venture. Authors want to do good, but they also want to earn income and be fairly compensated. When we explain our model and how the licensing works, they feel very comfortable.

Last month Hal Plotkin released the paper Free to Learn: An Open Educational Resources Policy Development Guidebook for Community College Governance Officials. That document suggests that community colleges are uniquely positioned to both take advantage of OER opportunities and to become pioneers in teaching through the creative and cost-effective use of OER, including through the adoption of open textbooks. How are Flat World’s approaches different in working with universities as opposed to community colleges? What are the differences in terms of the benefits and challenges to faculty, students, and administration within each institution?

This is a great question, but it’s a little hard to answer, because we must consider another variable—the book itself. Sometimes a book is aimed at a community college course and demographic, and sometimes it’s aimed at a four-year research university. For example, our Exploring Business book has a big community college market, while our Introduction to Economic Analysis title out of Caltech has very much a top-50, Ph.D.-granting institution market. So, this confuses things a little bit. That said, I think it’s fair to say that there is generally a correlation between where the financial pain is greatest (which tends to be at community colleges and state institutions) and where the faculty are closest to that pain (where teaching is their primary emphasis, and they spend more time with students). This is where we see the greatest pull for this solution. There’s less of a pull from wealthier demographics and/or with faculty who spend more time doing research than teaching. While there’s more ideological and intellectual understanding of the value of sharing on the research side, pragmatically, the financial pain tends to be on the community college side.

In the recent First Monday article, A sustainable future for open textbooks: The Flat World Knowledge story, Hilton and Wiley suggest that in testing Flat World’s textbook model (“free online and affordable offline”), nearly 40% of students still purchased a print copy of the textbook. And Nicole Allen mentioned in our interview with her that the research of the Student PIRGs shows that “students are willing to purchase formats they value even in the presence of a free alternative.” So, print materials are not going away overnight, as long as the resources can be tailored in ways that teachers and students want to use them. But, as powerful digital technologies offer so many new ways to interact with educational content, how do you foresee the distant (or near) future in which print-on-demand may no longer be a core part of your business model?

We agree with the findings in those reports that print is going away more slowly than pundits proclaimed it would. We’re totally committed to what I think of as platform agnosticism. We never want to be in a position of having to guess which technologies or trends will win or lose. Part of our solution was to build a very dynamic publishing engine which could take a book—which is really a series of database objects and computer code that gets pulled together—and transform it through computer software programs to a certain file format. Today, one format goes to a print-on-demand vendor to make a physical book; another is an ePub file to be downloaded to an iPad or other mobile device; another is a .mobi file for a Kindle. We can afford to be on the leading edge and make formats available that may have low penetration today. And if they grow faster, we’ll be there with a salable format for those devices that will proliferate.

The most important improvement we can make to learning outcomes across our society right now is access. People sometimes ask me, “Isn’t the textbook itself a dead paradigm?” I tell them no, because billions of dollars per year are spent on textbooks. Right now you could create a really killer learning product, and I could take the one that’s already being used by millions of people and make it much more accessible. Enabling greater access is going to have much bigger short-term impact. Going forward, improvements in learning outcomes beyond access will come from things that aren’t content. They will come from experiences—whether it’s an assessment I take and get immediate feedback to inform a specific learning path, or whether it’s a social learning experience in which I’m dropped into a community of learners with a challenge and we draw upon each other to come up with solutions. Content supports those things, but isn’t as important in some ways as the experience.

Our view of the world is to get into the market where there’s pain today, establish a large base of users, and then keep evolving the product to be an increasingly better learning tool. That will inevitably take the form of integrating more unique services that can’t be copied. That’s the long-term goal for us, and probably critical for any business operating in the digital medium, to be financially successful. Kevin Kelly, the technology writer and founding executive editor of Wired, said it best: “When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable.” I believe that.

What does a successful teaching and learning environment implementing the power of open textbooks and OER “look like”? Do you have any lingering thoughts — worries, hopes, and predictions?

I don’t worry too much because if we keep our finger on the pulse of what people want to do, we’ll figure it out. One potential danger is the expense of providing this abundance of integrated tools, formats and options for users. It’s easy to imagine the expense of systems that incorporate things like an assessment engine built on adaptive learning and artificial intelligence to guide users to the best resource, all the while connecting them to other users to foster a richer learning experience. This has the potential to be very expensive, and ratchets up the imperative for players in the open community to help figure it out.

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Meet our board members: Hal Abelson

Lisa Katayama, November 3rd, 2010

Founding board member Hal Abelson was an advocate of Creative Commons from before the organization even existed. He was a grad student in the 60s when people starting buzzing about computers. “They cost several million dollars at the time,” he says. “My first thought was, this computer thing is great, you can turn kids loose on it.” Now a Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT, Abelson has always advocated widely and deeply for sharing on the Web. In the early 80s, he published a book about the Logo programing language after spearheading its first implementation for Apple. He created free software before the Free Software Movement even existed. And in 2002, he started MIT’s OpenCourseWare program, which offers teaching materials from MIT classes for free. It was the first large corpus published under a CC license.

Abelson’s latest venture is Google’s App Inventor for Android, an interface that lets anyone visually design games, educational apps, text tools, and other fun products easily. “It should be natural that you can take your cell phone and build a mobile app for your friends on it.” He notes that people tend to experience technology as consumers rather than creators; this, he believes, has the potential to shift.

One of the greatest challenges facing CC, Abelson points out, is parsing the complex, non-intuitive legal language of copyright into something that everyone can use and relate to. “When we started CC there was the Internet, but people could not use it according to the law. Now we’ve built this enormous, wonderful technical infrastructure of communication sharing and reuse, but our institutions are still in gridlock. There’s a tremendous discrepancy between the law and people’s behavior. In order to make it really okay for people to reuse and remix material from another web page, using CC licenses has to be easy. The legal concepts in copyright just aren’t intuitive—they don’t align with the reality of the things people think about.”

Nonetheless, Abelson is optimistic and excited about the future of sharing. “Creative Commons is the foundation of open sharing on the web. Almost everybody uses CC every day. They may not think about it, but they do. We’re able to come together in a way that was never ever possible. To me, that’s what changes humanity.”

Join Hal Abelson in showing that you care about Creative Commons by donating to CC today.

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Watch Sintel, an open-source animated short from the Blender Institute

Lisa Katayama, November 2nd, 2010

Last week, we interviewed Ton Roosendaal, head of the Blender Institute, on his new open animated short film called Sintel. (Blender is an awesome open-source 3D creation suite, and the Institute is the studio that creates content like Sintel that employ amazing Blender-enabled techniques like smoke simulation and volumetrics.)

The film was made possible with crowdsourced funding from thousands of online supporters and, since it was released on YouTube a month ago, has gotten over 1.8 million views. If you haven’t seen it already, here’s your chance!

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Featured Superhero: Mitchell Baker, Chairwoman of Mozilla

Allison Domicone, November 1st, 2010

I’m pleased to introduce Mitchell Baker, the next of our exceptional CC Superheroes to tell you in her own words why she supports Creative Commons and why you should too. As the leader of the Mozilla Project, she is responsible for organizing and motivating a massive, worldwide collective of employees and volunteers who are breathing new life into the Internet with the Firefox Web browser and other Mozilla products. Here is her story. Join Mitchell in supporting Creative Commons with a donation today.

Mitchell Baker

Mitchell Baker

“Creative Commons fills a vitally important role in building an innovative and creative society. Creative Commons provides an easy way for people to choose to collaborate in creative activities, complementing the default settings of copyright law. I hope you’ll join me in supporting Creative Commons.

Imagine you take two photos. You’d like to restrict use of the first photo as much as possible — you don’t want anyone to post it anywhere, or to use it or to alter it. Maybe this is because you think it’s a good candidate for selling, maybe because it’s personal and you don’t want anyone else to use it, maybe because you think it’s perfect as is and would be diminished if anyone changed anything about it. The other photo you feel very differently about. You’d like to see what people might do with it. Maybe you’d like to see it distributed widely with your name attached to enhance your reputation, or so people come to you to buy other photos. Maybe you think it would be good set to music or included in slideshows, or maybe you’d like to see how people might alter it.

Figuring out how to get maximum protection for the first photo is easy. One simply does nothing — in most countries a creative work is automatically subject to default copyright law. If one wants to emphasize this one can add a copyright notice, but this is not required. Maximum restriction is the default.

Figuring out how to let other people build upon one’s creative work is actually much harder. In fact, without Creative Commons there is no easy way to do so. Creative Commons provides a clear, effective way for each of us to choose to share our creative work when we want to, dramatically reducing the barriers to voluntary sharing. It provides legally enforceable mechanisms that live happily alongside the default of maximum restriction of copyright law. Creative Commons empowers creators to choose how our works are used and shared as well as protected.

The ability to share our creative works easily is an important complement to the traditional ability to restrict their use. It’s important for individuals and it’s important for society. There is no doubt that the voluntary sharing of effort can produce immense civic, social, and individual value. Voluntary collaboration, based on shared resources, shared data and shared creative work provides new tools for solving complex problems. By making voluntary sharing easy, Creative Commons provides new avenues for individual choice and human interaction.

Mozilla embodies this idea, as do vast portions of the Internet. Mozilla relies on voluntary collaboration to build individual empowerment into the structure of the Internet. We use a Creative Commons license for many of our materials. Creative Commons licenses have a similar spirit to the Mozilla Public License, which allows software innovators to release their creations to the public to be built upon, expanded, and improved in ways that we never thought possible. Creative Commons makes it easy to extend this idea beyond software to other creative content. We support Creative Commons financially as well.

If you haven’t tried sharing some of your creative work, I invite you to try it. Next time you need a photo for something, search your favorite photo sites for CC licensed work. Add some of your own. Share some of your music and see what comes of it. Consider a donation to Creative Commons. Be open to openness.”

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Investigating CC’s Welfare Impact: Quantity, Quality and Variability Measures

Tal Niv, November 1st, 2010

CC has recently started thinking more rigorously about its contribution to the world. See the first, second and third posts in this series for an introduction.

In my former post I spent quite a few words trying to explain where I believe CC should and shouldn’t venture looking for the proper metrics that will efficaciously represent its contribution to welfare. The bottom line was that what seems like the ultimate decision is to look to the direct contribution of CC to Quality, Quantity and Variability measures. I now intend to elaborate a little on this approach.

The first thing that is important to mention is that Quantity, Quality and Variability ought to be measured across the different fields in which CC operates, for example, in art, in OER, in UGC. Second, that QQ&V should be measured under the different value pillars (transactional, institutional, norm) and third, as they pertain to both productive and consumptive use. By productive use, I mean the sense by which CC complements the quality, the quantity and the variability of active, creative, collaborative endeavors and by consumptive use I refer to the sense in which CC promotes passive use of existing creative enterprises, by expanding access to them and by increasing the efficiency of consumption.

The contribution to Quantity is probably the easiest to explain. It means just one thing by way of method: counting; how many new works are being created thanks to CC’s activity? (productive), how many additional passive uses are there? (consumptive) and how many distinct new creators, collaborators and consumers are added? These can then be naturally specified by pillar of contribution (again: transactional, institutional, norm), by field of activity, across fields, by use type and by user type.

Quality has both an internal and an external meaning: By internal quality of a work we mean to refer to the works’ level of excellence in terms of its own field, which in itself is a complex measure that judges the value of the work itself. The external quality measure refers to the level of contribution of the work to the promotion of a collaborative environment and is therefore tied to both the productive process of the its creation and to its consumptive uses. In terms of purely consumptive uses, quality refers to the advantage which consumers are able to extract from the work itself.

The variability parameter is set to measure internal and external novelty as it is induced by CC. Internal variability means the creation of new types of works within a field, whereas external variability pertains to the dynamics of the creation of new fields of activity. The aspect of variability is very much related to the innovation literature that often analyzes the status and dynamics of growth in terms of the accumulation of new products.

But our job doesn’t end here, because it is not just changes that CC induces in the measure of quality, quantity and variability that ought to be calculated; in fact, crucial to the value assessment is the consideration of change rate. Since the rapidity of value accumulation is in itself a substantial aspect of the contribution level.

Now, the next immediate step ought to be defining metrics, per field, for each of these three attributes, quantity, quality and variability. But, as we’ve become accustomed to, there are still several complications that need to be dealt with:

  1. CC is operating in numerous fields. In order to be optimally effective, it must rely on cost/benefit analysis which will suggest to it how to best divide its own resources.
  2. CC is a comprehensive framework which creates value spillover effects across fields.
  3. CC’s fields of operation are not clear-cut fields in the sense that some works are hard to categorize. For example, basic science and OER are far from being distinct fields and of course, user generated content comes in all “flavors”. And since CC sets itself to promote these interdisciplinary collaborations they are essential and weighty parts of the value it creates.
  4. Often, CC’s contribution will be in creating altogether new fields of activity. It is important not to lose track of those by putting too much emphasis on inter-field benefits.

Now it seems to me that the pitfalls introduced by #2-#4 may be bridged by considering the contribution to collaboration, or to the mode of creation and consumption that is more heavily based on sharing. Or at least that’s the belief I choose to stick to. Firmly. Yet, when it comes to pitfall #1, that one really seems to require the second order estimation of the contribution to welfare of the actual field, or a predefined preference ordering which relies on other underpinnings. At any rate, it transgresses the scope of the estimation project.

So, for example, we can think of the contribution to collaboration using these attributes: When it comes to quantity, effective will be more participants in each CC’d creative enterprise, in comparison to non-CC’d enterprises, as well as more distribution of the CC’d work when it comes to the consumptive measures. From the internal quality perspective, what is judged is the level of the cooperation according to the promotion of the creative spark through the shared mode of creation. From the external quality perspective, a high-quality collaborative work would be replicated more than others, and create collaborative energy which will carry over to other enterprises. When it comes to the potential contribution to variability, what is judged is the extent to which more types of collaborative efforts are being fashioned, both within and across fields.

CC’s contribution to art can serve us as yet another example. If we think in quantity terms, we can measure the number of new CC creations, the number of new CC artists, the number of new types of artists, and the extent of distribution of CC creations, from the perspective of consumptive use. When it comes to quality, the level of the relative internal excellence of the CC’d artwork can be measured, as well as its external impact on other creative sites. Quality measures for consumption will encompass its effectiveness, in terms of the impression that it is capable of making on consumers. Variability, in art, will be set to measure the relative innovativeness of the CC artistic enterprises, both within existing genres and in the cultivation of new ones.

And I could go on and on to CC open education enterprises, to the CC’d basic science enterprises as well as to distinct cases of CC’d user generated content, but the point is probably clear by now. The basic idea is that these measurements are all the output we need, because having calculated them, we ought to be able to go on to scrutinizing CC’s contribution on any desired level. For example, once we know how art is affected by CC, through the measures of quantity, quality and variability, anybody could translate that into how art’s contribution to welfare is boasted.

Does that all make sense to you? Let us know, we’ll appreciate it.

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2013 Governor’s Awards in the Arts: International Bluegrass Music Museum

When I went to interview Gabrielle Gray, executive director of the International Bluegrass Music Museum, I had not visited Owensboro, Ky., for at least 20 years. Wow, was I blown away. I can tell you honestly that if I were looking for a place to make a new home at this point in time, I would give serious consideration to Owensboro. The city is alive with the arts. Much of this links back to the enthusiasm for bluegrass music that the museum has created through its numerous programs since it opened its doors in 1991.

Bluegrass has become part of the city’s brand, and its citizens embrace the genre as part of their culture. The International Bluegrass Music Museum will receive this year’s Governor’s Awards in the Arts Community Arts Award. Read excerpts of my interview with Gabrielle below to find out more about what’s happening in Owensboro.

Tell me about the programming you provide in the community.

Just to give you an example, ROMP (IBMM’s annual bluegrass festival) has grown to 20,000 visitors a year, which is a very nice-sized festival. We just had our 10th anniversary. The first one was in 2004. It was held in Peter English Park down the river. We had Earl Scruggs, Ricky Skaggs, Doc Watson, Sam Bush. It was a great event, but it only drew a few thousand people. That’s how ROMP was for the next seven years in a row; it was an intriguing but small festival. We invited the pioneers of bluegrass to play. Because bluegrass is a pretty new genre as genres go, most of the founders of it, the early practitioners, were still alive when I came here. Now it’s been 10 years, a very vital 10 years in that echelon. So many of them are not alive now. But we have filmed them. First person, in-depth, professional interviews with professional interviewers; we’ve done 268 of these. We’re developing them each into an individual documentary. We’ve got the history. Lock stock and barrel, we have captured it. There is no music genre in America that has been able to do that except bluegrass. So it’s a really astonishing archive, and it really tells the story, especially of the southeastern quadrant of the United States, but also all over the country.

The bluegrass in the schools project is ginormous. We’re in year 11 of that. We’re in all of the elementary schools. In order to preserve and sustain bluegrass music, and to grow it here in the home state — this is Kentucky’s official state music and it’s this area’s indigenous music — in order to preserve that culture and further it and put it to work for us both educationally and in tourism, you have to grow it. You have to sustain it. Everybody in your community needs to know about it, be aware of it, embrace it and be part of the process. And so, in order to get all that done you have to start at the beginning, start when they’re growing up.

We have this sustained program where we spend eight days in each elementary school. And all of the kids have an instrument — we’ve had to buy hundreds of instruments — so everybody is holding an instrument, the same instrument at the same time. You’ll have a whole sea of violins or fiddles and they’re all learning at the same time. They learn the history of bluegrass, its importance to the state, and then they learn about the fiddle, the mandolin, the banjo and the guitar, those four instruments.

That’s the first thing we do. Then the second thing we do is we hire a national act that performs in every one of these schools. They put on a concert. And that happens every year. The parents are invited and the teachers come and the administrators come and it’s always a very big deal because a band is here in town for two or three weeks. They’re in all of these schools and then do a concert for the general public. So after that, if you want to, if you have been turned on by that and trust me they are, big time, then you can come down here (to the museum) and take lessons on Saturdays. We provide the instruments on loan; you take them home and keep them with you as long as you’re in the music program. These are group music lessons and right now we have 414 students and it’s people of all ages. There’s a tiny tuition. If you don’t have that money, you just write an essay about why you want to take lessons and you’re included for free. It’s gigantic. You can’t believe what it looks like here on a Saturday. It’s a small museum and there are back-to-back people.

What is it about bluegrass music that transcends cultures?

Well, it’s an amalgamation of so many genres to start with. If you look at the Scots-Irish, the Celtic music, the African — I’m a classical musician, I definitely see Vivaldi and Bach in there — it’s black gospel, it’s white gospel, it’s blues, it’s jazz, it’s Cajun. It’s friendly; it doesn’t put on airs. And yet, it is the most virtuosic of all the genres because the musicianship in a premium bluegrass band is higher than, or as high as, you will find anywhere on Earth. Not only are they playing to the top skills of all other musicians, and in most cases far better, they’re also composing on the spot just like jazz. Bluegrass is incredible. But it puts on no airs. That’s why it has become a worldwide genre. It’s like a musical exchange program.

How has the community embraced and supported the museum?

Well, I think what happened is that ROMP turned the lake over, putting the programming in there that was broader than traditional bluegrass and opening it up to more people. One thing we did, anyone who was involved in a college bluegrass program throughout the country was invited to come for free, provided they brought their instrument and jammed, and stayed all three days. So, we were changing the atmosphere of the festival, making it into a jam session of really good musicians from all over. It’s creating a culture and creating a milieu and a place where everybody is comfortable. The festival is green. It’s well organized, the food is excellent. There’s a wonderful arts and crafts fair. We have tremendous arts all over the place.

So when the population of ROMP exploded like it did overnight, the city took notice and said “Wow.” What you’ve been saying to us all along, that this could be like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is to Cleveland, like the Country Music Hall of Fame is to Nashville, this could be an international center. This could be the biggest thing in Kentucky. They saw it.

How has the community supported the museum?

There is bluegrass being played everywhere now. It’s for weddings, it’s for funerals — it’s everywhere you go. It has changed the entire cultural landscape of this community.

The ROMP budget has grown to over a half a million dollars. With the exception of ticket sales and earned income, all of that money comes from support. Think of that. It’s enormous. We have close to $200,000 donated by businesses. Everybody’s coming. We’re in a $10 million capital campaign. We haven’t even gone to the bluegrass community yet. This has all been raised out of Owensboro, $8 million already. That’s gigantic. The city pledged $3 million to the new museum. How many cities do that?

Let’s get down to the grass roots level. Every single music teacher in the city and county and in the parochial school systems here, every single one helps us with the bluegrass in the schools program. We bought a set of instruments for every school. They teach them. They have after-school programs set-up. They’re teaching the kids how to play the instruments; they’re working with us, all of them. They all come and perform at ROMP.

And they’re part of it. That’s the key to everything — inclusivity. Making people part of a project, then it belongs to them. Then its success becomes integral to their being.

Emily B. Moses, communications director

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Jay Ambrose - Immigration issues solve themselves

Sometimes it seems the tipping point has come and disaster is on its merry way, and then -- what do you know? -- things start taking care of themselves. Maybe there was some helpful shoving, and it could be that more needs to be done. But you still have a kind of spontaneous solution, as is the case with immigration.

The immigration issue that has received the most attention is illegal arrivals, but that has always been just part of it. The United States has been importing roughly a million legal, permanent immigrants a year, more than any other country, and the vast majority of them come from very poor parts of Latin America, mostly Mexico. They were largely uneducated and unskilled, often did not speak English, and frequently struggled to make a decent living.

Some were educated, and many that were not contributed in important ways. There are nevertheless limits in opportunities for those without special abilities in this increasingly high-tech country, and a lack of education is a drag on productivity. It should have come as little surprise that increases in poverty have come largely from Hispanics and that a high percentage of immigrants end up on welfare.

Some people said Latino poverty would disappear as generations pass, but as Heather Mac Donald of Manhattan Institute has demonstrated, many Hispanic families have been plagued by unwed motherhood and offspring who drop out of high school and have too many brushes with the law. Poverty has not gone away, and the need was more of something started in the 1990s: standards of immigrant admission emphasizing skills, education and wealth instead of just family ties.

That seemed impossible after the presidential election. The Latino vote has become big and powerful, and Republican candidate Mitt Romney alienated it with his calls for a national ID system to keep illegals out of jobs and to encourage self-deportation. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama wooed Hispanics with a presidential edict that immigration laws would be ignored in the case of deporting immigrants who came into the country as children. It was a humane move that also happened to be unconstitutionally autocratic, which is to say, rule of law does not matter to some when it comes to politics.

I need not remind anyone of the election's outcome or how Republicans suddenly seemed to believe you can't give Latinos enough hugs or kisses, and it seemed that we could anticipate legislation that, if anything, would encourage still more immigration of the kind damaging our future prospects. Here is what is happening minus intervention: First off, owing in part to a bad economy made worse by Obama's mismanagement, Mexicans have been self-deporting in vast numbers. And at the same time fewer and fewer are choosing to come here. Mexico is having an economic boom, its middle class is growing, opportunities are increasing and the growth of its population is slowing.

Meanwhile, the largest immigrant group now entering the country every year is Asians who mostly come here with high skills and education and who largely end up making good incomes while their children earn college degrees. They absolutely are assimilating, and the point is not a difference in racial or ethnic groups, but that it pays off when immigration rules emphasize potential boosts to the economy no matter where people come from.

I think we should aim, as James Glassman of the George W. Bush Institute says, to attract as many of the world's smartest people to America as we can. I think we are also in a position now where we can give amnesty to illegal immigrants making a positive contribution, granting them citizenship after they attend demanding classes and pass an exacting citizenship test. A national ID would still be a good idea, but especially given already improved border security, I think we're approaching a time when the flow of illegal immigrants will be a minor matter.

(Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.)

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NewsCrime Crime Blog

Crime Blog

Dallas police searching for restaurant theft suspect

Detectives are asking for the public’s help identifying a man they say was involved in a distraction theft at the Blue Goose Cantina in Old East Dallas.

Police said the man entered the manager’s office at the restaurant in the 2900 block of Greenville Avenue and took $2,400 in cash from an unlocked safe while an accomplice distracted the staff by sharing coffee samples.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Hopkins at 214-670-5760. Anonymous tips can be submitted online at or through Crime Stoppers at 214-373-8477.

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5725 Hollister Ave.
Goleta, California, United States
Ph: (805) 683-1202
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Update Critiki's Info
Daily 6am-2pm
Defunct tiki not included,
distances are as the crow flies.
Kahuna Grill, Goleta 2.8 mi
4.6 km
Kalyra by the Sea, Santa Barbara 7.7 mi
12.4 km
Hong Kong Inn, Ventura 32.2 mi
51.8 km
VenTiki, Ventura 32.3 mi
52.0 km
The Aku Aku Motel, Woodland Hills 72.2 mi
116.2 km

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Humuhumu’s description:
Alphie's is a greasy-spoon diner, serving breakfast and lunch. The space is light and airy, with white walls, but there are quite a few Polynesian touches throughout. There are some carved tikis on the wall, lauhala matting, tapa cloth, and an outrigger hanging overhead. It's a family-run joint, and if you are lucky, you may catch the owner and friends playing jazz.
Alphie's has its own parking lot, in back.
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August 15, 2012, 9:07 PM
If you just look at it for what it is, it's actually kind of cool: an island-themed breakfast joint with a lot of authentic oceanic decor. The food (with names like "Beachcomber Breakfast")really isn't all that special, but the place has a Hawaiian feel to it. It's a good place to go if you're visiting SB or passing through town, but doesn't justify a special trip.
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Friday, 30 January 2009

will the worlds go boom!

Or will the Cannibaal von Baal eat them for lunch........

I could go on for ages in a Sun/News of the World vein but won't. It is hard to tell whether this years World Cross Champs are wide open or whether they are actually a 2 horse race.

Certainly the 2 protaganists that occupy more column inches than most of the others put together are clearly on form - last weekends WC race in Milan turned into a sprint between Lars Boom and Sven Nys with the latter taking a perhaps surprising though deserved win. The fast race though had a large lead group in its closing stages and no one rider was able to break away from this group - more on this later.

Sven has had a history of croaking at the Worlds - either self-induced or with bad luck, as well as accusations that he is overtired by a hectic racing schedule by the time the end of Jan comes round. He is clearly hungry for another Worlds title and stung by the reticence of the Belgian public to class him with the greats at the moment because of his lack of rainbow success.

Lars Boom always set his sights on a World title, but he acheived it 1 year early in Treviso. This year (the year he originally wanted a title) is home turf year for extra motivation and he has not been quite as visible as Nys on the racing circuit, preferring to peak for certain races (Pijnacker, Niel etc). When doing so he has been untouchable and Hoggerheide will be no different.

Prince Niels Albert nearly took himself out of the game (for good) with a serious crash at Gavere and has been easing his way back in. He will be fresh for sure and has either been hiding in the pack just behind the front, getting the race training in, or simply struggling. He above all is the unknown quantity - good enough to win one dayfor sure, but good enough this year?

Bart Wellens has picked some good wins this year and lost some races that he perhaps should have won too - who knows how he will do?

Vervecken looked like he was doing his usual Xmas form finding exercise and won on his style of course at Roubaix but has not been consistent since Xmas - dont discount the old timer, though he may struggle when others are at the top of their game too.

Other possibles - Kevin Pauwels looks like the poor kid that got bullied at school but rides so elegantly (sehr elegant in Flemish!) and packs a mean sprint. He is also a superb bike handler - one of the best? Stybar has a riding style remiscent of an amphetamine enhanced 17 yr old at a hard house rave, but could do the business too? He was looking good at Milan. Vanthourenhout was also very active at Milan and clearly on form - would the other Belgians ride for him as he is Nys mate (a long involved stor for another post)? Klaas Vantornout has been sort of there all season, but not quite. Groenendaal is too old surely but on home turf and up there till the final selection recently in other races. His teammate Thys Al is getting better and better this season - he would have some national teammates to ride for him too.

Official Crossjunkie spies (Dave and Eric from the club) tell me the course was waterlogged last week and they were not allowed to ride on it by order of Adrie van der Poel himself so a muddy race is almost guaranteed. That will benefit Nys, Boom, Vervecken and Wellens in particular judging by the results from the earlier season mudbaths.

So, enough prevarication, what is the prediction that you've all been waiting for? No pressure here considering the 100% record of predictions so far from this source........

1 Ben Berden
2 Petr Dlask! ...............just kidding!

1 Boom
2 Pauwels
3 Vervecken

Bart will go out fighting but Boom looks like he will do the business, Pauwels is under-rated and threatening to break through big time (therefore my wild card result) and Vervecken can always get up there. Nys will be marked closely and may lose heart if he can't get away with Boom. He does not seem to have the power this season to ride away from the field like he used to, get a gap and keep it. Boom does though. The Belgians may not ride for him (Nys) like they would for Pauwels or Wellens due to past shenanigans with Groenendaal and Albert simply hasn't recovered enough (I think...).

The oracle has spoken. Whether it bears any relation to reality will remain to be seen.

Live coverage on Eurosport 2pm Sunday - I shall be there with a Duvel or 3 in hand to watch the showdown.

Update: Course conditions appear to be dry with minimal mud on the surface - forecast for frost but no heavy rain.

If conditions are faster then perhaps that throws it wider open??

Tuesday, 27 January 2009

nw league final - crossjunkie strikes rich vein of form too late

I love going up the M6 to the Scorton Scramble - it's a slightly bizarre location within the imposing Wyresdale Hall grounds, the course is like some old school cross assault course and I always seem to go well there.

Unfortunately, many others didn't share my enthusiasm this time and the start line was populated with only 38 riders (I believe). A few more came to watch and pick up their prizes at the do afterwards, so at least there was a good amount of spectators to encourage us on what has to have been the toughest course all year, even above Dave Haygarth's snowbound Rossendale slog. Mind you, it had been a long season and enthusiasm had naturally waned by the time Scorton came back round, and the prospect of a cross-country race carrying a bike may have failed to excite a few non-running crossers.......

Nonetheless, those who had made it approached it with the same trepidation as usual and it was a slightly subdued group who took the boggy start. I had decided to go off hard and actually managed it into the first turn in second before slipping back a little onto the course proper. A few hiccups down the 4 wheel drive bog/track and we hit the run through the cow field. This was as grim as previous years though slightly more rideable nearer the top. Luckily I had the crack Vet Pits team of Dave Headon and Mick Style looking after my spare bike at the top and offering valuable washes and encouragement.

By the end of the first lap I was a surprising 6th and 1st Vet - the lower strength field was something to be taken advantage of, though to be fair (to me!) I was going better than in living memory. Rob Pugh, Matt Harwood and Lewis Burke had cleared off leaving Martin Kitchen, me and Kevin Walford to battle it out. Martin slipped back a little leaving me chasing Kevin in 5th. My running was a little stronger than Kevin's and I caught him to move into 4th. At this point I realised this was going to be long and painful race - the lap board after an eternity of racing still said 5 laps to go and I was going too fast to be lapped to reduce that tally. Riding on your own is never easy and after 2 laps to go Kevin had made a big effort and caught me with 1 to go. My racing instincts are still not really there (were they ever?) because when he bobbled in the slop section and slowed, I too slowed to let him get going again. 'After you, no after you I insist'. Doh. He was stronger than me anyway (my excuse...) and got away at the bottom of the climb leaving me to struggle in a shattered and blown wreck, only to lose 5th on the final running bend into the finish to someone I didn't even know was behind.

No matter, 6th and 1st Vet was what I had come for and Dave and Mick's support had made a tough race more bearable. Matthew Harwood grabbed his first win in a close finish with Rob Pugh - nice one Matt! Form has arrive for me at last, but just when the season has finished.......

I wasn't able to stay for the prize presentation but would like to congratulate all those who won their individual League category:

Newly sponsored Rob Pugh performed conistently all season and pipped a disappointed defending champion Dave Brailsford who struggled with bad luck and perhaps(?) the big changes to his family situation last year. Well done Rob - we'll look out for some good results on the road now.

Mick Style retained his Vets title for the second year running, with Dave Headon breathing down his neck most of the season. Dave had the better ride at the Nationals though after peaking perfectly.

Lewis Burke was untouchable as first Junior and finished 3rd overall in the League. Chapeau!

Sean Beswick and Ray Pugh were V45 and V50 champions, Eric Taylor V60 and the evergreen Ian Small V70.

Finally, Joe Allen was U-23 champion and the equally evergreen Carolyn Wright, the Ladies Champion.

Oh and my club, Horwich retained the Team title for the 8th year running - my dream of being in the winning 3 counters is still some way off, but I'm working on it..............

So ends a long and muddy season - I actually only finished 6 races (with 1 mechanical DNF). Not quite what I had intended really, but sometimes you fit in what you can. I certainly couldn't have managed to ride every race, but hopefully next year I can ride a few more, as when they fit in.

Thursday, 22 January 2009

dugast vs fmb tubulars

Not quite in the same league as the PC vs Mac debate, or even Shimano vs Campag, this little teaser nonetheless has many similarities. Dugast are the industry leader in cyclocross tubulars, having been around in pole market position for years, but FMB offers a truly artisan, even quirky alternative for those who eschew the mainstream and wish to make a statement about their own taste and style.

Actually that's crap because though produced in larger quantities, Dugast could hardly be described as mainstream in the cluttered world of cross tires, but you get my drift?

Having used or tried both types (in different specs), I feel I am vaguely qualified to comment on their relative merits and qualities and the following may make interesting reading for anyone thinking of splashing out their last credit crunch spends on some cotton, latex and rubber. Any comments on the performance of the tubs come with a health warning - I am not an elite rider, nor amongst the most technically gifted BUT I am an enthusiast and have been riding cross competitively at one level or another for a good few years now so hopefully my opinion is worth something.

Dugast used to reflect it's founder - Monsieur Andre Dugast's little company in a shed, known amongst the pro cogniscienti and not many others. Famous (amongst those in the knowat least)in Europe on both the road and the cross scene, the best riders would beat a path to his door for their handmade weapons of choice, a situation which remains unchanged even in todays sponsor obligated pro circuit. Brother Nys and his adversaries still pay for their own tubs, though probably at a discount as long as they do not upset 'Old Man' Richard Groenendaal who part owns the company now!

Andre Dugast in his workshop

The other owner, who bought the name and the moulds for the treads is Richard Nieuwhuis, one time and possibly still-time mechanic for the Dutch National Team and certainly Groenendaal's partner in crime on the Euro scene. The two Richards have modernised the business, keeping the look but upping the production numbers for a wider market. It seems to be widely acknowledged that the quality has gone down accordingly as production increased, but Dugast are still special and still a cut above anything out there. Except perhaps FMB.........

Richard Nieuwhuis

And what of the new kid on the block? Urban legend has it that Francois who owns FMB used to work for Monsieur Dugast when he was but a lad - a nice story though I have it on good authority that this isnt actually the case. He does however come from the era when Dugast was at it's height and is clearly familiar with the concept of beautifully supple handmade tubs. I first came across FMB from cross impressario John Holmes who met Francois touting his brand new products in the pits at the Hooglede World Champs in Jan 2007. I have 'spy' shots from the pits at that Champs showing Sven Vanthourenhout's bike with a new Dugast like tub but with a different tread pattern. John began importing the tubs alongside the Dugast range and I plumped for some in lieu of some Dugasts that were slow in coming in. More on that later.

FMB have grown much bigger now but Francois has positioned the brand as artisan made, the only truly artisan tub manufacturer left. His tubs, though of superb quality have yet to seriously challenge Dugast in terms of volume sales.

The ranges:

Typhoon - the classic tread pattern also used by Grifos. Suitable for most mixed courses.

Pipistrello - white diamond pattern for sandy, frozen or very dry courses. Old model had side knobs, new does without.

Rhino - knkown as a specialist mud tire primarily, though they work well on most other surfaces. Reduced clogging and great grip due to aggressive side knobs.

Flying Doctor - in Typhoon or Pipistrello versions. Softer white tread (than a normal Typhoon) but with a stiffer casing to allow lower pressures but higher speeds. Best on faster courses with less mud.

SSC - all purpose tub. The tread is a combination of Typhoon centre and Rhino side lugs, more aggressive than a Typhoon but less so than a Rhino.

SSC Sprint - diamond tread with aggressive side knobs.

SuperPrestige - orange latex side wall, puncture resistent band under tread. In SSC or Sprint tread.

SSC Pro - thin super supple latex wall. Like the old Pink Dugasts from yesteryear.

World Cup - Limited Edition silk walled tub.

Special editions - send your tread to Francois. I did this with a green Michelin mud tread and the result is striking!

How do they compare?

I have ridden Dugast Typhoons and Rhinos, FMB SSC, FMB Superprestige Sprint and Superprestige SSC. I started my journey through the tub world with Tufos - the coloured Prestige and then Flexus (now Cubus). The Flexus was a revelation compared to clinchers and the other Tufos, in terms of its suppleness. On getting Typhoons, I realised there was a whole new world out there of low pressure and grip to be had as they were a quantum leap above in terms of suppleness.

Rhinos certainly set the benchmark in terms of mud tubs - they grip in anything and at any angle. Even with an average rider such as myself, I can tell a big difference in the grip levels compared to normal tubs let alone clinchers, as long as the pressure is low enough. The FMB carcasses are definitely as supple as a Dugast, the benchmark for such criteria and they are straight and well glued/sown together.

On balance I feel the FMBs are the better tubs. They are more durable (ie better made) than the Dugast, the standard SSC version is almost as grippy as a Rhino and the Sprints grip like the proverbial to a blanket even in quite slippy mud. In the orange latex SP version, they are simply superb as the walls are proofed against rotting and punctures and operate like a Dugast Flying Doctor Typhoon or Pipistrello allowing lower pressures without folding over.

So why this season did I use Rhinos for the bulk of the races I did? Simply because the Rhino tread is the best out there for NW mud (and probably any other mud come to think of it). This season has to have been the muddiest for a good few years(?). The ultimate tub then? It would have to be an FMB SP casing, 32mm with Rhino tread - special order from Francois.

I actually had a pair of these made up by Francois in green SP 34mm using the treads off my first pair of Dugast Rhinos. They are superb, though I messed up ordering them in 34 rather than the more appropriate 32 - the 34 front can feel a bit cumbersome in the mud, though better when it is rougher. They are still fantastic though and will see many years of service.

FMBs (and Dugasts) are best ordered through John Holmes of Cyclocross Imports who usually has stock in and is in regular contact with FMB. He also carries a delectable range of specialist cross gear from frames to zipped legwarmers - contact details on

Tuesday, 20 January 2009

wellens over the barriers at wc roubaix

1st lap, Bart is pushing hard to open up a gap. As he comes into the barriers, white hot, Joe Sales (photographer for CX Magazine) comments that “Bart was going so fast I was sure he would wipe out.”. The barriers were apparently 55cm and not regulation 40cm to add to the spectacle!

He didn't wipe out, just - for comparison Boom and Stybar are not far behind on the right, and Nys is further down the field in the all white of the World Cup Leader jersey. Boom and Stybar, 2 of the finest cross riders in the world, simply look slow in contrast. Enjoy the chaos in the pits afterwards.

Apologies for the watermark - having issues with the licence for the software.........

2nd lap, Bart is still out there giving it some.....

world cup @ roubaix

Last Sunday's (18 Jan) Wereldbekker Cross at Roubaix was a classic - close racing, monumental mud, a wild rollercoaster of a course that had the Elite men running down the steep and sketchy descents and an exciting finish. Those that were less cautious on the descents (including Radomir Simunek below) ended up like this!

I wont reveal the result for those that have yet to watch or get the DVD of me, but one thing stood out for me - Bart Wellens is simply light years quicker over the barriers and at remounting.

His style is pure kamikaze - entry speed a good 2 or 3 miles per hour faster than the others, blindingly quick leg speed and then a remount that literally snaps him back on the bike. As a lesson in how to get a gap on your opponents, it delivers every time. As a strategy to hurt yourself badly it also promises much. But he nails it each time and is clearly confident enough in his abilities to do it right, time and time again. Chapeau Bart, still one of the most exciting riders for me.

I'll edit the video and post a clip of what I am talking about in a bit, but until then.........

Monday, 19 January 2009

photos from - stunning!

These are part of a beautiful set of black and white photos from a recent USGP race. Go check them out:

Friday, 16 January 2009

dutch and belgian national champs videos

Exclusive to crossjunkie (well courtesy of Ed Raket in the Netherlands - thanks Ed), highlights first of all, of the Netherlands Championships......

and now the Belgian Championships from Ruddervoorde.

Thursday, 15 January 2009

a day out at the nationals part 2

It had warmed up during Saturday night. In fact it did more than that as a howling gale blew in and helped remove all trace of frost or frozen ground from the course by Sunday morning. We arrived bright and early for the kids races - J and E were wired and fired and ready to race.

It was E's first cross race and she was impatient for the off. Lining up at the back of the grid, barriers stretching ahead down the road and the PA blaring it might have been a bit intimidating for a 4 yr old but she wasn't fazed and had a look of steely determination. After the gun, there were the usual near misses you get with a bunch of u10s riding in close proximity, but then she was into a rhythm with a steady hand in the back as 12 inch wheels, a fixed gear and stabilisers were not much help into the fierce wind down the home straight. She made it round the lap in style, being lapped close to the finish and thereby avoiding subjecting her puffing Dad to a second lap. It was a great kids course and there was a real atmosphere because of all the people, course furniture and PA - she loved it and is keen to go back for more. J rode well after being a little overawed by it all at the start and finished in the top 20.

Unfortunately we missed most of the women's race and left for home before the men's - those races are well documented on the British Cycling website. However, Carolyn Wright from Horwich got 5th Ladies Vet and I suspect at least a silver in the V50 category, and Dave Haygarth from here in Lancs rode a great race to finish 24th, backing up a Wheelbase Team win with Lewis C and Jebby. Paul Oldham, another of Lancashire's favourites also showed real class to get a silver but overall honours went to a Southerner that a certain blog writer had tipped the week before for a win.

There was indeed an air of smugness in the crossjunkie household that evening, though we shall see if the promising tipster can get it right for the Worlds in a few weeks...................

Wednesday, 14 January 2009

a day out at the nationals part 1

The big freeze was having its final fling as I drove over to Bradford for the Saturday racing at the Nationals. The car display read -3 degrees through into Yorkshire over the moors and only warmed up on arrival at 10am to 0 degrees. The forecast was for a thaw though bringing interesting conditions for a Nationals.....

Meeting Dave H from the club I grabbed the opportunity to ride the Nationals course in the biting cold - fast, flowing, cambered and engrossing. The surface was solid but rutted in places where practice laps had previously taken place in warmer conditions in the preceeding days. A good day for file tread? But only if if the temps stayed that low otherwise Rhinos seemed a possible if unlikely choice as the subsurface stayed hard but a slick top surface developed....

I was pitting for Eric T in the Vet 60s and Dave in the Vets and it turned out to be the most relaxed days pitting I have had - no bike changes, no washing and certanly no dragging around pressure washers and barrels of water. Instead it was a question of standing around, shouting positions or time gaps and watching some great racing and performances.

Eric struggled with the cold a little and the blisteringly fast 50+race but finished well up there in 7th in his age category a couple of minutes off a bronze medal. Ian Wright demolished the field to win easily in the Vet 50s with an illness affected Roy Hunt only managing token resistence before pulling out.

The Vets race was a corker - made all the more so by Steff from the club joining us in the pits to support his mate Noel Clough who was one of the big favourites for the title (who had arrived somewhat late after ending up in Halifax). The conditions had thawed a little and with traffic the course was becoming slightly softer - it was noteworthy that Chris Young and Cloughy amongst others had opted for Rhinos. Chris got the fastest start I had ever seen him have and there was consternation in the Clough pit as he seemed a little off the pace in the opening lap. However he got going and me and Steff spent the rest of the race checking the gap which was pretty consistent at around 12 secs. Not even a late charge from Chris Young put Noel under pressure and he blazed around to a well deserved title.

Dave H also had a great race, benefiting from a Belgian extravaganza of racing over the New Year period, ending up 23rd, not far behind some classy riders from yesteryear and some good riders from the present.

NW local Johnny Mac had an unlucky race crashing twice in the U-23 as the conditions became really slick and simply couldn't get back on terms with David Fletcher. He was later rewarded though with a Worlds trip to Hoogerheide this month.

Wednesday, 7 January 2009

molly cameron @ middlekerke

Tuesday, 6 January 2009

Revolution Cross at Todmorden

Photo: Jonathon Watson
This was 15 mins away for me so a no brainer, particularly as J could ride the under 12s and go home with mum and leave me to ride home after my race.

Personally I think cross made a triumphant return to Tod, and even my return to racing had a vague sense of Hurrah to it! Chipps Chippendale (I kid ye not) had organised a tight race with a good course and the field of 108 showed the crossing public's approval. J came with 2 friends and they all rode the under 10 race, and friend Mark came to ride his first bike race in at least 15 years.

Kitting up in the car park beforehand there was a bang like a Chinese Mega-Firework followed by a sheepish Paul Warrener (Rossendale RC) looking for a spare front wheel. I had one free (as ever) and happily handed it to him. After 30 seccs or so, my brain computed a possible problem with this and I quickly checked with Paul how much pressure he had been trying to put in his tire.

The answer of 80psi came as a bit of shock, mostly because I had just handed him a handmade FMB Superprestige tub that would cope with say 50 at most. Hurried assurances were sought from Paul that he would not re-attempt the inflation process at his normal levels with my tub. Danger averted, I took to musing about how on earth he managed to ride anywhere in the mud with 80psi. Anyway, as his own admission of being a roadie showed, it takes all sorts.................

Photo: Jonathon Watson

Back to the racing and after a fast start I found myself well up the field containing lots of Yorkshire riders and some other big names warming up for the Nationals. Up and onto the cobbled climb and a slight problem emerged. I had ridden this in warm up OK as I had a large cassette on in anticipation (I remembered it from racing there years ago). However with the full field on it, riding was impossible. Unfortunately so was walking as the cobbles were as slippery as ice in my shoes! Having removed studs from the shoes to make them easier to walk in, I then wanted them back in to try and hook the edges of the cobbles and get purchase.

The course was flowing, mostly fast up or down and with some fab sweeping, slippy bends. Mick Style came by after 10 or 15 mins - nice to reinstigate our mid race meetings once again. He pressed on and after a couple of laps I couldn't see him ahead anymore. Ian Bibby came through to lap me, riding a steep, muddy climb that no one else seemed able to ride. Chapeau. Few other riders seemed to pass me and I was happy to finish up 34th out of the monster 103 finishers. Mick rode well for 22nd, Anthony Morris back on form with 15th, Rob Pugh in 12th and Dave Haygarth a cheerful 8th behind the hotshots and the Wheelbase crew. Chris Young beat Noel Clough - a sign of things to come in the Vets race at the Nationals?

crossjunkie returns - in time for the Nationals

Apologies for the break in transmission recently. The three part teeter totter didn't come off for me during November and in the run up to Christmas and I took a break from all things cross to recharge the batteries.

However, this is an exciting time of year for cross with National Champs everywhere this weekend and the build up to the Worlds weekend straddling Jan and Feb so I couldnt stay away for too long.

I even managed a return to racing after not riding a race competitively since the end of Oct! Crikey where did all my plans for a good season go?

As for our own National Champs, I am going to get into the prediction game briefly and go with Helen Wyman for the Womens (not too much risk there as she podiumed recently in Belgium over Christmas) and stick my neck out for the following Mens result:

1 Crawforth
2 Hammond
3 Bibby

Jody Crawforth has been racking up some very good results on the quiet over in Euroland during the Christmas break - if he can do that there with all the faffing it entails then he can produce it back here. He is a class act who can break through I suspect and besides, I have bought a Race X Lite tub wheel off him in the past which was a bargain - nice guy.

Hammond is always a threat but has, as ever done very little except in recent weeks. You can't rule him out for another win though.

I watched Bibby walk the race at Todmorden and he was going well at Macc I hear over Christmas - apparently he looked significantly fresher than some big names last Sunday as he won the Revolution Cross. Food for thought?

I'll probably be hopelessly wrong but will be there in Bradford to see how wrong I really am.


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Cruise Ship News, 03/15/2013: St. Maarten Assists Dynasty Passengers + MORE

Cruisin Susan Cruise Ship Headlines:

Princess Opens 2014 Europe Season for Sale

Greek Isles Cruise Ship Adventure

- Princess Cruises opened its 2014 Europe cruise season for sale today, including the debut of the new Regal Princess which will set sail on its inaugural cruise in June from Venice. In total, five ships – including the line’s two newest vessels – will sail on a variety of cruise ship itineraries throughout the Mediterranean and Northern Europe…

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Norwegian Breakaway leaves Meyer Werft

Norwegian Breakaway, the largest cruise ship to ever be built in Germany, departed Meyer Werft in Papenburg, for her approximately 24-hour long conveyance along the Ems River yesterday morning and arrived in Eemshaven early today. The river conveyance demonstrated Norwegian Breakaway’s seaworthiness and marked another key milestone prior to the ship’s highly anticipated delivery.

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Stranded passengers of the Carnival Dream cruise ship that stalled in port at the Dr. A.C. Wathey Cruise and Cargo Facilities on Wednesday, began their journey back home Friday, March 15, 2013 with the assistance of Princess Juliana International Airport (SXM) and added air transportation with the goal of making passenger departures as seamless as possible…

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Passengers on the Carnival Dream have been stranded in the Caribbean after the cruise  ship developed equipment problems. The incident comes just a month after passengers were stranded for four days in the Gulf of Mexico on board the Carnival Triumph in what some described as toxic conditions.

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Statement Regarding Carnival Dream – March 15, 2013 – 12:30 p.m. EDT

Cruise Blog Extra - March 15, 2013 – 12:30 p.m. EDT
The following provides an update on the Carnival Dream cruise ship in St. Maarten.
Guest Logistics: We have arranged for a combination of approximately 50 commercial and private chartered flights departing St. Maarten for the 4,363 guests onboard Carnival Dream…

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Have questions? Need answers? Contact Susan Kruglanski, Expedia CruiseShipCenters, 1-866-794-2857, It will be a pleasure to be of assistance! Your satisfaction is our mission.

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annoying kid smiley face singing a earworm for a breakfast cereal
frosties kid = thrush boy in need of a slap!!!
shite advert on uk tv but the kids think they are Greeeaaaattt
your just like the frosties kid an annoying little twat that dont shut up and gets right on your nips
od uživatele soapy-uk 31. Červenec 2006
1 more definition
Top Definition
1.the annoying brat off of the frosties advert. he says sumbliminal messages in the advert if you play it backwards.
2. someone who eats thin air (who is blonde) whilst doing the long jump
1. i just hate the frosties kid, that ad is soooo anoying!
2. OMG, did you see jake do the long jump? he is so the frosties kid. why don't we sing the song to him whenever we see him? yeah, that sounds like fun.
od uživatele 02. Říjen 2006

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CSE 222

Graduate Communication Networks

Winter 2001

Midterm Project
Out: 2/6/01
Due: 2/18/01 by 11:59pm

The midterm project is based upon the popular ns network simulation tool. ns is widely used for networking research, and you will see results from ns simulations in many networking papers. Personal experience with ns will therefore help you understand and evaluate the papers that you read, as well as give you experience with using ns for your own research.

You can do the project alone or with a partner; the project is small enough that three people is overkill.

Background Reading
Part of the project will be a comparison of different router queueing disciplines. One of them will be fair queueing, an excellent description of which is given by the following paper:
A. Demers, S. Keshav, and S. Shenker, Analysis and Simulation of a Fair Queueing Algorithm, Internetworking: Research and Experience, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 3-26, 1990.

You should read this paper when you get to the fair queueing part of the project. The goal is to give you experience exploring ideas from a research paper in your own work, something you'll do more extensively in the final project. For those who find fair queueing interesting, another (optional) excellent recent paper is:

I. Stoica, S. Shenker, and H. Zhang, Core-Stateless Fair Queueing: Achieving Approximately Fair Allocations in High Speed Networks, Proc. ACM SIGCOMM, Vancouver, Canada, September 1998.

It turns out that the Active Web machines cannot explicitly be enlisted for class use, so you will nominally have to do the project on the grad APE machines. I say nominally because you are welcome to do the project wherever you find Tcl/Tk and ns installed (or where you have installed them yourself). The details for using ns on the APE machines are in Dmitrii's tutoral page.


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Canadian Collegiate Bass Anglers

The Canadian Collegiate Bass Anglers was formed in 2009, and was an evolution of The Conestoga College Fishing Team.  Matt Pezzetta, the founder of the Conestoga team, and current Canadian Collegiate Anglers president, started the federation after seeing a news report on the Alabama University fishing team and what large following college fishing had in the US. The Canadian Collegiate Bass Anglers are currently a federation of 14 anglers, representing 7 different schools ranging from Sudbury to London.

The Canadian Collegiate Bass Anglers concentrate on qualifying the best of the best collegiate anglers to represent Canada in the Boat US Collegiate Bass Championships, which annually take place every May in Texas, although changing venues to Pickwick Lake in Alabama for 2012. This past May, 3 of the Canadian Collegiate Bass Anglers drove to Dallas, Texas to compete in this prestigious tournament. Please visit the Canadian Collegiate Bass Angler website to get the full story of their experience, from the trip to the tournament.

As the federation grows, so does the responsibility to the sport. Every year, the members are encouraged to get involved in the community, whether it is speaking at meetings, volunteering with big brothers or just simply taking someone fish who has not been before. With this younger based age group getting involved, they are showing promise in our sport for tomorrow.

For more information, please visit: www.canadiancollegiatebass.com and for information, please contact canadiancollegiatebass@live.ca


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 Concordia St. Paul - Concordia Volleyball: Studying for Finals While Eyeing up the Competition
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Concordia Volleyball: Studying for Finals While Eyeing up the Competition

Emily McDonough (left) and Amanda Konetchy study in the CSP Commons leading up to the NCAA Tournament.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Six straight NCAA Volleyball Championships and 39-match national tournament win streak on the line. Whether or not Concordia has a seventh trophy in tow when they return to campus next weekend, one thing’s certain for these student-athletes… finals start on Monday.

“It takes effort on their part, a lot of effort,” says Concordia University, St. Paul head coach Brady Starkey of the team’s balance with academics. The program has earned it’s laurels as a volleyball dynasty, but that’s only half of the picture for these student-athletes and their combined 3.37 GPA.

“They’re goal-driven people who work hard in the classroom. They understand that first and foremost, they’re here to get an education.”

“We work with our professors to get as much done as we can ahead of time. Communication with them is key, and we fit in studying whenever we can,” says the team’s setter, Amanda Konetchy, surrounded by her teammates and a table filled with computers, books and papers on Monday morning.

The senior is already a three-time All-American and recently received another round of NSIC academic honors, as did seven of her eight eligible teammates.

Golden Bear fans only get to see the results of the hours in the gym, when the team takes the court and plays at a championship caliber. But what does the daily grind look like for a student-athlete? Here’s a peek:

The team headed up to Duluth last Wednesday for the Central Region Tournament. They stayed in St. Paul long enough for players to attend most of their morning classes, but had to leave earlier than planned due to the weather. It wasn’t the 24 inches of Duluth snow that made the squad nearly miss an evening practice session, however - it was the bus’s troublesome transmission along Interstate 94.
The next three days, players camped out in lobbies of the hotel and gym in the mornings and during breaks between matches, nabbing internet access where they could. They put their books away at game time and went 3-0 to remain one of just eight teams in the nation still standing. (For fans who missed the action, they overcame top-ranked Minnesota Duluth on UMD’s home court in the Championship match.)

Without a single player on the roster who knows what it feels like to lose a postseason match, how are the Golden Bears preparing for this weekend’s Championship finale? They’re studying. This is the week before finals, after all, and the bus leaves again on Tuesday.

Concordia Volleyball Quick Facts
- 6 straight NCAA Division II trophies (2007-2012) and 39 straight NCAA tournament wins
- 11 straight NSIC conference titles
- Player names throughout the NCAA record book
- 10 AVCA Academic Team Awards in the past 10 years (3.3 team GPA or higher).
- 9 Academic All-Americans
- 2 nominees making top 9 for NCAA Woman of the Year (Mary Slinger ’09 & Ellie Duffy ‘ 13)
- Head coach Brady Starkey named Region Coach of the Year 8 times, NCAA Division II Coach of the Year in 2010 & 2011

No. 3-ranked Concordia will take on top-ranked Tampa in the NCAA Championship quarterfinals, this Thursday at 5 p.m. (CT). Watch the match FREE, visit www.cugoldenbears.com for all tournament information and viewing links.

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Basic Cube, Sphere, and Node Models

Here are the first models for CvS:

The Basic Cube

The Basic Sphere

The Unclaimed Node

These are of course not skinned as of yet but Tyler should be uploading some skinned versions soon.

Organics Basic Unit Concept Art

These are a few sketches of the basic forms of the spheres/organics that I did. The forms include the meat n' potatoes unit, attacker, defender, and scout/ranged attacker. Next I'll be doing some of the cubes/mechanicles.

Cubes Vs. Squares

CvS Tagline- Cubes vs. Spheres is a real time strategy game that focuses on developing your units to powerful forms by fusing them together and unleashing them on your unsuspecting enemy in this fun two player multilayer game.

Units & Structures:

Basic Unit Abilities- The basic unit comes in the form of a Bioblob or Mechanocube according to your respective team. Listed below are all the abilities that every basic unit has.

-Capture: The ability to capture nodes and capture home bases.

-Attack: The capacity to engage enemies in combat.

-Defend: The ability to dampen enemy damage aimed against them.

-Move: The power of mobility.

Advanced Units & Fusing- In the game all basic units possess the ability to advance to one of three distinct units, the scout, defender and the attacker. Once a unit has been advanced, it has the ability to combine with another advanced unit regardless of type with a maximum of 3 evolution levels for the unit.

-Attackers: Attackers are the melee units in the game specializing in close combat. The

more melee units you combine the more damage they will do.

-Defenders: Defenders are the damage absorbers taking less damage from attacks that could

otherwise do significant damage. When combined with other unit branches it makes the unit have more damage absorption. Defenders gravitate towards the closest enemy within its sphere of influence. .

-Scouts: Scouts are the agile units with the ability to shoot weak ranged attacks. When combined with other units from separate branches they become quicker.

**Nodes**- Nodes are the capture points of the map. (Next statement is temporary due to the removal of the home base and the lack of another victory condition) In order to win the game you have to capture more than half the nodes on the map holding them long enough for the activated timer to reach zero. Nodes also produce more spheres for your controlling, however, it only creates them one at time automatically rallying the created units to the player's designated Node.

(Left Click)

(Right Click)

Selecting Units

Node Rally

Moving Units

Attacking Units

Visual Cues:

White light: When the player mouses over a potential action (With the exception of moving) the object of interaction is highlighted with a white light so that the player knows what it is his units will be interacting with.

Node Rally Light: When a player left clicks on a node the node is lit up to display its role as the unit rallier.

Creep (Territory): Creep is a visual cue telling the player that he controls the node associated with that territory. This is done by showing a distinctive team related texture or color that covers the entire expanse of ground on the controlled area.