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Bloggers Fighting? Oh, If You Must . . . Do It Right

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I agree
I saw and article called How to fight with other bloggers, on Paul Boutin’s blog Sunday. It’s advice he offers to bloggers about arguing, “if you need fight, do it right.” Doing it right means following three rules.

    Rule 1: Fight only with bloggers bigger than you.

    Rule 2: Stick to the arguments you know

    Rule 3: Don’t talk about the fight.

If I might add a few of my own,

    Liz’s Rule 1: Make sure it’s worth fighting about.

    Liz’s Rule 2: Keep personal talk out.

    Liz’s Rule 3: Don’t kick a guy who’s down or a horse that’s already dead.

    Liz’s Rule 4: Always leave the other guy a place to stand.

    Liz’s Rule 5: Remember your future boss and your heirs will be reading whatever you write a long time after your feelings have cooled off.

If a cause is worth supporting, it gets more traction from positive interaction. 😉

The blogosphere doesn’t need any of us to make it work.

Liz's Signature

A Future Leaking with Links and Good Things!

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In Due Time

It took me a day or so to get back from the future. I had set down my crystal ball there and I had to find it before it fell into evil hands. Never know when a wicked witch of OZ will show up to cause trouble But finally here I am to report back in again.

Tuesday Open Comments Night, this week had us predicting. We looked into the crystal ball to foretell our future. We weren’t sure about the part that involved fame and fortune, but we felt certain our blogging friendships would continue on.

And of course our relationship with the Link Leak Virus will be with us as well. — The Link Leak Virus is a special strain of the indie virus with blogtipping mutations that occur in threes will keep Open Comment Night a link free-for-all.

Welcome to every person who came, all of you fortune tellers are my favorite people in the universe.

Cool links were shared to last for the future.

Back from the Future — rewind

It was November 29th, 2006 at 9:38 am already when Mike stopped by to say that he read the leaves in his tea.
They said a strange friend would send a message or a strange message from a friend would be coming to me.

Cat, who was wiped out from a hard day of meetings,
left us with a pile of future greeting.

Ah Pek says in his country they rely on the power of a medium to find out whether their future only holds only boredom and tedium. (Fortune must not have given him a nod for he ran off saying “Oh my God!”

In comments 205 – 211, Becky McCray read my palm with grace, poise and calm. She found details in the lines and revealed the secrets of time. She also left a last card for the crew, read it to hear the fortune for all of you.

1-800 HART made sure that we understand the tarot death card. People misunderstand it, when it comes up and take its appearance hard. He also brought a card trick — many like this are about. If you think on it you can figure it out


Joe was looking for a card trick we shared some time back, but it apparently has been by two kids in the rack. He left on a his poetic note. It’s fun to know we’ll soon have a whole book of modern day Berma Shave poems that Joe wrote.

Char wondered aloud about her future potential breaking out. Liz started asking what Char wanted her future to be about. Liz finally realize that there was a confusion. Liz had been talking reality and Char had been playing along with the crystal ball illusion.

Sheila Scarborough came filled with accomplishment of having finally cleared a garage for the cars. So she had time to spend charting a future in the stars.

Service Untitled – Douglas popped in and out in his usual MO. I think he was taking notes on how all of our futures were set to go.

Sean alluded to being rich from a major deal with paypal. Could he have some traits in common with Chicago Al?

Rick Cockrum knows where to go for the latest in future information. I wonder whether he’s up for a giving a presentation.

Renée seemed quite pleased with her future predictions. She’s bringing them home to Tall, (soon to be ) dark, and handsome.

Carolyn Manning isn’t afraid of ghosts or philosophy. Her handwriting reader told her things. “No one would know unless he grew up with me.”

Chris Cree doesn’t want to know his future, but then he made his future to be saying that he didn’t want to know his future.

Sasha Manuel doesn’t find it hard to tell a future with an ordinary deck of playing cards.

Ben Yoskovitz has so much going on these days. You can bet that his future will be about change.

Marti believes in ghosts and so do many. Her new book about the paranormal is better than any.

Trisha is read to start a new future with good things going on, especially no pain. But mostly she wants to be happy.

I’m with her on that. Happy is a good thing to be.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Net Neutrality 11-30-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

No Slam Dunk for Net Neutrality (with apologies to George Tenet)

What isn’t yet known is who will chair the pivotal Telecommunications and Internet Subcommittee. If it’s Ed Markey (D-Mass.), then you have a strong Bell opponent, strong Net Neutrality proponent and some momentum. But, Markey has a lot of options. He could try for the chairmanship of the full Resources Committee, and he also has seniority on the Homeland Security committee.

Depending on what Markey does, the Telecom Subcommittee could be led by Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.). Boucher, like Markey, is a strong Net Neutrality proponent. But unlike Markey and very much like Dingell, Boucher tends to favor the Bell companies on many other issues.

[ . . . ]

With some positive Net Neutrality leadership in place, then the question becomes, what would be in any overall telecom legislation, and there the picture gets lots more murky. Let’s start with video franchising. This is the concept behind the Bells’ push for a bill this year. They want to get into the cable business, providing TV programming over their fast networks, and they don’t want to negotiate with 30,000 local authorities to get permission as the real cable providers had to do. So the Bells pushed the bill that gave them, and cable, a free pass nationally to enter cable business, pushing aside objections from local governments.

[ . . . ]

Remember, the Bells still have a lot of friends and a lot of votes in Congress, whether on Net Neutrality or not. There are many legislators of both parties, on the relevant committees or not, who will vote the Bell line regardless. Net Neutrality isn’t a slam dunk. The key will be how much the Bells will be willing to deal. They didn’t feel the need in the last session of Congress. Now, with the leadership against them, they may have a different calculus, of trying to get the best bill they can.

By now, the Bells have realized how important Net Neutrality is to a great many people and organizations, ranging from large companies like Google and Yahoo, to public interest groups like Public Knowledge (my day-job employer), something they probably didn’t count on this year. If they try in good faith to negotiate a reasonable Net Neutrality provision next year, the Bells could gain some of their goals despite themselves.

Want to know what you can do?
MA Bell Monopoly Versus the Free Internet — Tell the FCC Net Neutrality Is Not Negotiable

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Jon Symons Is a B.A.D. Blogger!

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Blogger A Day Call: Hello is Jon there?

Jon Symons isn’t the typical blogger. He didn’t start out on a on Blogger or free WordPress. He coded his own blog from scratch.
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When Jon and I talked, yesterday via Skype, his mellow voice told me he used to be a Systems Analyst — a job most in his profession would die for. He said that fact made it hard to walk away from it. On other hand, Jon knew his heart wasn’t in it. He felt he was only an average coder. “I was interested in business, not in the perfect subroutine.”

He walked away to follow a dream.

Jon and I talked the blogging business he’s starting. He told me how the night before, Sean Wise, the guy behind the b5 funding deal, was in Edmonton giving a talk to entrepreneurs. Jon had braved the cold to see him. Then in an uncharacteristic turn of events, Jon braved the crowd when he described his business plan to a roomful of folks who hardly understood the Internet. It’s not Jon’s usual nature to stand up in crowds.

Soon we were discussing how how blogging changes people. Jon said he couldn’t imagine announcing his business plan publicly that way just a few years ago, but how natural it seemed, and how it helped things become more real in his mind.

I mentioned my nonblogging friend who calls blogging the “ultimate self-therapy.” Jon spoke of a study of bloggers he read that described us as intelligent, curious people — “Fits my experience of the blogger I know,” is what I replied.

We waxed philosophical on following your bliss. The practical side of having support from people, such as significant others, came up and was underlined. We even worked on what the next steps might be in filling out the people needs he has for his blog network. I passed a few names along to him. We promised to talk more as things progress.

It’s the excitement of watching something being born. It’s the fun of hearing a guy, named Jon, talk about his dream.

B.A.D. Blogger Quote

When you leverage your passion it grows so much faster, and it grows so much more real. —Jon Symons

Stop by Jon’s Blog, Art of Money, and say hi!

Thanks, Jon, you B.A.D. Blogger!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to be a B.A.D. Blogger see the. . . a B.A.D. Blogger? page in the sidebar.

Qualitative, Intuitive Thinkers vs Quantitative, Data-Based Thinkers: How Not to Make Each Other Crazy

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I've been thinking . . .

It was a chain of thoughts this morning, that started with a post at Seth’s blog. I so agree with what he said, but I should warn you, this post is not about his content. His post title got me thinking about the ways that people think.

This must be hard

Seth’s title, “This must be hard,” reminded me of a woman I once worked for. Joan believed that all good things must be difficult. She often said that anyone who achieved a 3.9 grade point went to an easy school — no exceptions.

Joan sought out the hard road. She liked hard data. She strove to have her “ducks in a row.” Her details never fell through the cracks. Her entire knowledge of gut feeling was how to spell it. Working smart in Joan’s world meant taking the easy way out.

Joan was mostly a quantitative, black and white, data-based thinker.

I was an intuitive, “seat of the pants,” qualitative thinker. At times, Joan’s boxes, details, and ducks all lined up made me crazy.

Thoughts of Joan led me to remember a comment made on Bloggy Question 31. in which Chris Cree said, ” . . . Life doesn’t always fit into a tidy calculated box.”

Chris made the comment of a qualitative, intuitive thinker.

That single sentence would have made Joan crazy. No facts, no concrete to support it. She’d say it was too easy.

Folks who prefer one way of thinking often frustrate folks who prefer the other. Gosh wouldn’t it be nice if everyone thought like we do? Well, not really. Both kinds of thinking are important to making great decisions.

No one seems to dispute the fact that every person has a preference, or that we all can do both — we just don’t like one nearly as much as the other. Still we need both.

How Not to Make Each Other Crazy

The trick is knowing when to be intuitive and when to get to hard data. It’s figuring out how to work together without driving each other crazy — knowing when a situation calls for folks who are good at one or the other.

It works a lot like writing — go for ideas, then edit and test them.

Qualitative thinking is a valuable skill when we need ideas, possibilities, and solutions. Creativity needs the room that qualitative thinking allows. Even qualitative numbers — somewhere around a billion — work when we’re trying to imagine or wonder our way out of old assumptions into new options.

Once we’ve gathered possibilities with potential — likely suspects — that’s when we turn to the switch to quantitative thinking. Move over to the black and white, gather folks who think well in concrete, hard data terms.

Quantitative thinking in binary black and white is a valuable skill when we need to test and validate ideas, assumptions, and action plans. Getting grounded in reality needs the “yes or no,” the “go or no go” of solid numbers and “best and worst case” scenarios.

Two kinds of thinking challenge each other to make an idea and test it. One to imagine, one to validate — that gets the best of both minds, both kinds of thinking.

When I figured that out, I began to value folks who think differently than I do, It became a pleasure working with them. They like to do the things that I find frustrating and painful — herding ducks into a row.

Imagine or calculate it. It doesn’t have to be hard. Two kinds of thinking beat one.

Take a look at who makes you crazy. What does that person do well that you really hate to do?

Liz's Signature

Net Neutrality 11-29-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

There Is A Utopia For Net Neutrality

In this case, we’re talking about a real UTOPIA, the clever acronym for the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency, a group of 14 cities which banded together to build a fiber-to-the-home network that will eventually provide 100 mbps service.

[ . . . ]

From the start, UTOPIA’s developers thought through the public policy issues, particularly the competitive ones. Their answer was not to compete with private-sector companies, but to provide a platform for them.

UTOPIA said in its background materials it solves the competitive issue very simply, “by offering a network that is open to a variety of competitors that vie for customers based on the price, quality, and innovativeness of their services rather than on the basis that the customer has no other choice.”
[Keith Wilson, president of DynamicCity, the network’s operator] said the wholesale model eliminates the Net Neutrality objection right from the start because any service provider can get access to the UTOPIA network. That’s where the “Net Neutrality on steroids” description comes from. The fact that any provider can get on the network “takes the wind out of the sails of the incumbents,” Wilson said.

[ . . . ]

The individual service providers aren’t bound by the Net Neutrality, Wilson said, “The [Net Neutrality] problem exists when the network owner is wielding influence. When the owner is inherently open to all providers, then they [the providers on the network] can shoot themselves in the foot. They have to take the risk with their users who might be offended [by violations of Net Neutrality] and go to someone else.”

There are so far five service providers using the UTOPIA network. Four are local, MStar, Sisna, Veracity and XMission. AT&T is also offering service. MStar is the only one offering data, phone and TV.

How do customers make out with UTOPIA? Here’s a brief comparison. Comcast charges $68 per month for 3 mbps service. Qwest charges $54.99 for 3 mbps or $44.99 for 1.5 mbps.

On the other hand, MStar charges $39.95 for 10 mbps, XMission charges $40 for 15 mbps, and even AT&T can charge $39.95 for 15 mpbs.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE