Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft To Extend RSS
Joshua53077 writes "Microsoft announced today a plan to 'extend the RSS standard to better support the publishing of ordered lists of information...' This feature will be included in Longhorn. It appears as though they will be including RSS support in Internet Explorer, which will come over a year and a half after the same technology was introduced in Apple's Safari RSS." From the article: "Gary Schare, director of strategic product management in the Windows division of Microsoft, says that while RSS is a reliable standard for updating information in message form, it currently has no logical way to organize that information in a way that could help subscribers keep track of what is being fed to them."
Great, one more thing for Microsoft to muck up. Let's just hope that they don't put any security holes in it...
Repeat after me "embrace and extend" ....
So how exactly will they be changing the standard to make it incompatable with non-Microsoft readers?
Technoli
....all your newsfeeds are belong to us!
This feature will be included in Longhorn.
Don't panic. This gives the OSS community a couple of years to respond. Besides, this feature probably won't make it into the final release of Longhorn anyway.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
I'm sure they will add stuff that makes sense as well!
...while RSS is a reliable standard for updating information in message form, it currently has no logical way to organize that information in a way that could help subscribers keep track of what is being fed to them.
Which is exactly the way it SHOULD be done. Keep the management of the data seperate from the transmission of the data. Leave content management up to the APPLICATION.
Embrace, Extend and Extinguish
Goodbye RSS, it was nice knowing you for a while at least. I hope something even better replaces you.
From the article, The people at Microsoft noticed something that I had seen, only peripherally--that there were applications of RSS that aren't about news. Like podcasting? Also, who thinks Microsoft's extension of RSS may be the attempted return of push technology?
If you get an error, type "OVERRIDE" or "SECURITY OVERRIDE" and then try the optimize command again.
You can add DRM and other "features". Uggh.
I hope by "extend the standard" they don't mean "basterdize it and then break compatibility with all non-M$ versions" because we've all seen that before.
You assholes.
Which of these 2 enormous &#@$^#@$% will win?
God Fucking Damnit
This feature will be included in Longhorn.
Until it isn't.
Embrace, extend... and... damn, I forgot!
1. Sounds like MS is playing Catch up.
2. "Winer also suggested that Microsoft may be interested in integrating RSS more tightly with its software, in particular within Internet Explorer". Sounds like ActiveRSS to me.
3. Another feature to add to Longhorn, only to drop it later.
4. Probably will only work with IIS sites.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Embrace, extend and embloat..
People should fight this.. not use their features and block it saying it isn't standards compliant.
My guess is that they have so much legacy code, hardware, etc. to support that they just can't develop at a reasonable pace anymore. Will Windows eventually buckle under its own weight? I'm becoming increasingly skeptical that Longhorn will validate this platform. Unfortunately, their near-monopoly gives them the freedom to be so mediocre. Here's to hoping I'm surprised in 2006.
I'd rather be cycling.
It's only reasonable to expect innovation like this from the company that invented the Internet.
Microsoft kicks ass!
Is there really a concern that they'll embrace and extend when they take so long to embrace? Apple on Intel will likely be out before Microsoft releases the successor to XP, which was released in 2001.
So MSFT has basically taken the better, cooler features out of Longhorn and replaced it with an RSS reader? I haven't been paying too much attention to Longhorn but really, what new things are going to be in there?
No need to worry then, chances are it gets stripped from longhorn before release and it's another 10 years before this sees the light.
It's true that RSS lacks of some important features; or probably the complete specification isn't frequently used. Who is the oficial specificator of RSS? Anyway, if they want to extend that standard they'd better send the improvements to this organisation.
After the enormous improvements that were the MS extensions to Java, I'm sure this will be a great extension that will benefit everyone involved, and act to reduce lock-in. What wonderful people MS are, improving things for everyone.
I am trolling
1. Pick an up and coming technology that _you_ didn't see coming (and that your products don't support at all).
/.
2. Point out a fault in it. Promise to *fix* it by changing the standard so the improved version is only compatible with your software.
3. Get people to believe the technology isn't ready until you have a chance to support it.
4. Sell it as a new idea and profit.
Look, I made an ordered list without extending
'Really Simple' obviosuly means something different in Redmond. They've obviosuly embraced and extended English as well. I'll have to try that one in the Word thesaraus. Mark
Remember when "Deadly Embrace" referred to deadlocks?
...users of the Microsoft operating system Windows Longhorn were struck today yet another virus. This time the virus attacked via Microsoft extentions to RSS, or Realy Simple Syndication. The Microsoft version, called ActiveRSS aparently includes several hooks into the operating system that allow a malicious news feed to execute arbitrary code as the Administrator account.
Users of Mac and Linux operating systems were not effected.
Active Desktop had this channel subscription policy. Netscape Navigator had channels.
This technology, years ago, was hyped as "push." It went nowhere. RSS isn't REALLY that different, it's just more general purpose.
Is RSS worth the hype? Sadly, I think yes, but not this much.
Surely sorting the data is the job of the client program, RSS is just a way of delivering the information. I'd assume the Participatory Culture Foundation is going to have some way of sorting through the shows you subscribe to. Ways which currently exist include indexing the RSS message "Spotlight" or Longhorn search style or just using the existing HTML Meta Tag systems. (The former being IMO much more flexible and informative than anything Microsoft could come up with in code.)
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
Excuse me but when someone wants to "improve" a standard, isn't there a well-know, generally acepted method to do it? you know, with peer-reviewing and stuff? It just ticks me when Microsoft wants to "improve" something, but at the same time making it "unilateral", so that only their customer could benefict from the "improvements". If they want to do something that's Windows-only and that it's based in RSS, so do it, but call it something else and cut the associations with RSS! It reminds me of the "protected" CDs from RIAA... technically they aren't CD-DA, so stop calling it "CDs" and start calling it "round things with protected music that only play in selected equipements"...
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
Funny, every RSS feed *I* have ever subscribed to has always been returned in timestamp order, newest article first.
How *else* would you organize it? I watch my feeds based on timestamp - if something new shows up, it shows up at the top of the list.
It ain't rocket science ...
my geeklog
finally someone has the sack to get to the real truth and tell it how it is and i for one appreciate it a lot
Can we really extend RSS like this? Shouldn't they rename it to MCS (Microsoft Complex Syndication)? I mean, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication...
Embrace and Extinguish (TM)
after tabbed browsing... time to celebrate...
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=8053 3
Amazingly good discussion and demos!
A speech...
You hit the nail on the head. Content should be separated as much as possible from presentation. Just think of CSS and XHTML. Maybe the reason why M$ wants to break this rule is that it goes against some of W3C's fundamental philosophies.
The bits on the bus go on and off... on and off... on and off...
The real danger is that this very plausibly is just an excuse for them to make it "different" enough to patent the crap out of it. The patent office doesnt seem to be against letting people tweak good ideas and calling them their own.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
First of all, there are several incompatible versions of RSS already, so one more won't hurt.
Secondly, what is the point of the Safari comment? Safari has a tiny market share and it wasn't the first browser with RSS features either. Is there some kind of competition going on between Microsoft and Apple who can copy other people's features faster? Why not limit mentions of Apple to those areas where they actually came up with something for themselves?
Strangely, this doesn't comfort me.
No, Safari's had it since 2004-07-28 from which the Firefox team may have gotten the idea in the first place.
Their Office 2k3 XML format's 'may' have patents prohibiting their use in open source applications. Who's to bet the new RSS 'standard' will similarly be patented.
The headline should actually read:
Microsoft to embrace and extinguish RSS.
Note to BillG:
Just because you add features to something beyond a standard, does not make your version the new standard.
Standards, by definition, only exist when ALL interested parties agree to the definition of the standard. (Not to be confused with regulation: where all affected parties are forced to accept a definition of the standard, a la digital TV.)
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
Too bad the rest of Safari (before the recent 10.4 release) was horrible. Hey Dave Hyatt; core functionality (LiveConnect for example) should have come before gimmicks (like RSS support).
the Microsoft. All your RSS feeds are belong to us. We will add your software, technological ideas and inventions to our own. Your culture has already adapted to service us. Resistance is futile.
before MSFT patents all the "Extending" and happens to patent the core concepts.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Ahhh BLOATware! Easiest way to look continually busy at work!
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
Any recommendations for an RSS plug-in/add-on for Outlook?
But, if we want to include prereleases: some could use Firefox's RSS on 2004-06-15, as there was a publicly-published patch (see bug 244078)(note: not linkied because mozilla's bugzilla doesn't like slashdot referrals.
From the gnomedex feed - they are publishing a number of extensions via RSS 2.0. Winer even gave his blessing. The extensions are going to be published under the creative commons license. This is totally new for MS. Quite impressive.
You spy on warez!
And Microsoft wonders why they have such a poor image. What a bunch of arrogant f*cktards.
How many features were promised then dropped in Win2003 and Longhorn to get them released? Why the hell do they keep adding features?
At this rate we'll get Longhorn Lite in 2006, Longhorn Complete in 2007, and Longhorn As It Was Really Promised Ten Years Ago in 2012.
MS just needs to get over themselves and get a product out the door with the *current* set of features they promised.
Method of processing duck feet
grandparent and sibling posts are correct; firefox was first to demo and first to release.
I've heard tell that each of us will have seventy virgins when we reach Longhorn!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"Look, I don't know how they do things on your home planet, spaceman...but here in Mayberry, we just don't talk to gun-toting, redneck, amphetamine
freaks that way"
I love Red Meat.
There is a war going on for your mind.
If you want an excellent RSS +more sidebar (That LongHorn is actually based on) check out http://desktopsidebar.com/ ... I have used it for a very long time now and find it to be very actively developed.
Here is my screenshot: http://www.mnsi.net/~n0spam/I_broke_Google.PNG
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Yet...Give'em a foothold.
Really.
It's this and the groundbreaking RSS shiznit that shows the sort of innovation that will make users more than willing to lose 10% of the damn desktop to the stupid taskbar (maybe I'm wrong, but it looks like it's grown morbidly obese).
Other than that, ooooh.... um, we have a new file system to look forward to I think, which is definitely better than those stupid Mac users who got to leave all their documents and applications (give or take the compatibility issues) and just install Tiger under the existing Panther installation.
Not for Longhorn users. If you're upgrading, you'll have to wipe the NTFS partition. I'd like to know if Longhorn can mount NTFS, so maybe you could migrate your documents, but I doubt it.
Other than that.... well, no plans to mimic/outright steal Dashboard just yet, did I mention the clock?
Microsoft's Strategic Plan for RSS
1) Accept RSS and patent "Edison Extreme+"
2) Add enhancements to RSS
3) Add enhancements to the enhanced version of RSS and rename "Rapid System Service".
3.1) Rename Rapid System Service" to "RSS Edison Extreme"
4) Bundle RSS Edison Extreme with Longhorn beta v11
5) Release Edison Extreme+ (Edison Extreme Plus) [this is a completely new product from Microsoft (not to be confused with RSS Edison Extreme or RSS).
6) Profit.
Now, I'm no MS apologist (look back at my comments) but this is actually good news because Microsoft has decided to release the specs under a Creative Commons "Attribution, Share-Alike" liscense: one of the more generous liscensing plans released by the Creative Commons.
Larry Lesig has more at his blog.
I can't vouch for Microsoft's reasons for doing this, other than speculate that they are trying to respond to the old criticism that "embrace and extend" really means "steal and lock away". If Microsoft really is trying to be more open in it's communiction protocols, I can't help but see that as a good thing. They are free to extend all they want as long as they do not use their dominant market position to force those extensions on their customers to unfairly place burdens on their competitors.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
Read above as:
The screenshots I've seen show a really, really cool clock on the desktop. No really. It's quite spiffy.
I feel a patent coming on. Tossers!
Yeah, I'm sure glad that nice Mr. Tom Cruise isn't being forced into a sham marriage by the controllers of the looney-toons religion that is using him as a human mask.
Microsoft spokesman Jeremy Allaire today announced at the MS Java Developers' conference that Microsoft has develeped a new, improved version of The Wheel. 'Ours is simply rounder and a more robust architecture.' Allaire was quoted as saying. 'of course, our MS Wheel will be licensed to interested companies and individuals for a modest fee.' The new MS Wheel will be appearing in the 2008 Hummer H6, to be released in conjunction with LongHorn, who's horn just keeps on growing.
First they will extend it, patent it then they will make sure that IE and Office throw security warning when viewing non extended RSS. Since they have the market share they can pull it off and make it seem that standard RSS is somehow broken.
Then, you can either roll a feed that will apear to be broken in IE, Outlook et all or you will have to pay Microsoft a licensing fee / sign your soul away into shared code slavery...
That is of course if we let them... There is a small chance that RSS is already to popular for them to pull it off. MS would need all the major news providers to jump on the bandwagon with this really fast...
I'm teminally incoherent
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/how2
"5 Things You Didn't Know You Could Track with RSS
Package deliveries
New to RSS? Get a free account with Web-based RSS reader Bloglines (bloglines.com). In addition to tracking headlines from your favorite sites, you can now receive an RSS feed on packages from UPS, FedEx or the USPS-just enter the tracking number, and the feed will update at each stage of the delivery.
Library books
Avoid late fees and fruitless trips to the library with ELF (libraryelf.com), which generates a feed to inform you when books you've requested are available at your local branch (including a link to operating hours) and when your checked-out books are almost due.
Local weather
RSSWeather (rssweather.com) sends updates on current and forecasted weather conditions for your city. You can even customize the feed to notify you only when certain changes occur (temperature, forecast, etc.).
TV listings
Need to know when you can next catch Deadwood on HBO? Bootleg RSS (ktyp.com/rss/tv) provides channel-specific feeds (by time zone) with the day's programming for dozens of cable networks, including CNN, the Discovery Channel and ESPN.
Yourself
Find out when your company, favorite sports team or even your name is mentioned just about anywhere on the Web with PubSub (pubsub.com). The site trawls more than nine million news and blog sites and lets you create an RSS feed that alerts you when your specified keywords appear.
It is not unusual in most mature industries for the large companies to sit back and let others do all the hard work and R&D. IBM and Computer Associates frequently buy smaller and more innovative companies.
In the oil and gas industry the large multi-nationals often sit back and let the 'wild catters' take the exploration risk, only buying those that have a good record of finds. Chrysler bought Jeep which was a strong brand and filled a hole in their portfolio. GM was built from zero on nothing but smaller companies (e.g. Pontiac, Buick, Chevrolet) after it became apparent cars were a thing of the future and the companies purchased had staying power.
This is how risk averse accountants operate. It is a very old business pattern.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Yeah extending RSS is bad, I mean no one would dream of extending RSS. Just look at the slashdot RSS, there's no slash:department nodes or slash:section nodes in side of it. Oh wait there is. Please buy a clue before you post. Thanks
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
This is a good rebuttal of the +5 post above it.
And in a related news story, "Corn seen growing in Nebraska; Film at 11."
And this just in, "Doctors make a startling discovery; If you are color blind, then the BSOD is a lie!"
Sorta Simple Syndication Supporting Lengthy Ordered Lists So Users Can Keep Track Of What's New.
Speaking of RSS feeds, how does one go about getting the MSNBC RSS services, which are just RSS links on their RSS page, to deliver their content in the form of something like Firefox's standard 'Latest Headlines' dropdown in the Toolbar Bookmarks section?
On practically every other web site I've seen, I can just click on the little RSS icon which appears in the bottom of Firefox, but not MSNBC.
Atom is heading for IETF to proceed along the standards track; it is the "standard" for RSS in many ways (don't forget that there are now at least 3 flavors of RSS)
That get updates every hour on new ways to exploit your system.
They're extending RSS, they're extending SMTP with their patented "SenderID", and leveraging it all with their monopoly powers. Next: MMS will replace HTTP for streaming. Microsoft has distracted everyone enough with their vague talk of "open formats" for Office documents that they expect to blow through with proprietary protocols that interoperate advantageously with closed-source Microsoft apps.
--
make install -not war
RSSOAP. run in fear.
Let's say "may not break the standard". There are approved, compatible ways to extend it, but it's really hard to design extensibility into a standard. Often extensions are unforseen and won't fit into the way you expected to extend it.
Not to mention Microsoft's history (with Java and HTML) of making extensions designed to lock you in. They succeeded with HTML; they failed with Java (though perhaps that's more Sun's fault than Microsoft's).
Of course, if they have good ideas (and they have an awful lot of smart people working for them) the improvements will be propagated into the standard, and then all of the other RSS readers will want to implement them, too.
1) Embrace
2) Extend
3) Delay release until after Longhorn.
4) PROFIT!!
5) Patch Critical Security Flaws.
6) Patch Critical Security Flaws.
7) Patch Critical Security Flaws.
8) Patch Critical Security Flaws.
9) Patch Critical Security Flaws.
10) Patch Critical Security Flaws.
11) Patch Critical Security Flaws.
12) Patch Critical Security Flaws.
Since the OSS community says that they can produce quality software faster than a closed source shop, why don't they trump Microsoft's "Embrace and Extend" tactic by using an "Embrace and Preempt" tactic?
For example, MS announces they are going to incorporate RSS and add feature X in their next release sometime in the next year. The OSS community should just implement MS's idea in 6 months. If OSS developers have the advantage of speed to market then beat MS down with it. They can't extend what has already been extended.
Get my point???
In reading the links there, it looks like this may NOT be GPL-incompatible (the attribution, etc. restrictions would only apply to the specifications document, NOT to software implementations OF that specification, right?). Is Microsoft finally getting through it's growing pains to become a "mature[1]" company?
With the Office 12 "we decided to roll our own after OASIS did all the initial design work rather than work with them" XML-in-a-ZIP file formats, it seems like the formats THEMSELVES are under similar restrictions, though, so as to prevent GPL-licensed projects from using them legally (simplistic explanation - the GPL says (to paraphrase) "You can't impose any additional restrictions on people to whom you redistribute this or derivatives of it". "You must include the following attribution: [blah blah blah]" is an additional restriction. Sure, it's a very minor restriction, which allows MS to turn around and yell "see how unreasonably those horrible GPL people are? All we wanted was a little credit!" in hopes of undermining the GPL...)
Or are things better or worse than I imagine here?...
[1]As opposed to a company that is still trying to grow (or "growing up"?)
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
And only allowing select NDA partners to view portions of the closed source palladium protected proprietary schema documentation for their new Microsoft Syndication Standard which breaks compatibility with pre-existing and inferior syndication standards.
s >
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24407 8">firefox rss support came before safari
Which they released a 'legal', but value-added-only-for-microsoft extension, whose documentation was explicitly licensed as to prevent you from making an open-source interoperable equivalent.
AFAIR, anyway. Does SambaNG or whatever truly smell like an AD with the MS-KRB5 authorization field properly filled-in?
RSS 1.0, based on the RDF standard, is extensible through a documented mechanism involving RDF and namespaces. (I highly doubt MS has any interest in the 1.0 RDF-based standard at all)
RSS 2.0 (not RDF based, but itself an extension of 0.92) basically permits anything outside of its standard as an extension, provided the tags are in their own namespace.
If microsoft invents an extension that conforms with those rules, their feeds will not break existing browsers/readers/aggregators at all.
Its only a problem if they thumb their nose at the namespace thing and just blithely add tags in the "default". THEN they'll have pissed off a number of people.
In the end, it matters little. RSS systems have been built like HTML systems (and following the knuth policy) -- be specific in what you write; be generous in what you read.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
" I referred only to the RELEASED software"
I don't think version 0.1 of anything qualifies as a "release" in the sense that you are using it.
It could be a good idea if it was standardized.... Let the standards ppl implement it (w3), not MS. As long as you merged it into RSS version 3, then thats great, cause then your rss reader will know if it can/cant handle a specific feed. I'm open to new ideas, wherever they may come from. Just don't let MS implement it, all they want to do is break everything and own all technology on the planet.
Microsoft announced today a plan to 'extend the RSS standard to better support the publishing of ordered lists of information...'
Microsoft didn't announce anything. This was leaked by some totally random guy on his blog.
*gasp* An idea was shared; someone alert the media!
The idea was completely obvious and it is irrelevant who implemented it first except to forum-whore fanboys.
But what about blink? I used to use that all the time back in the day. Oh the memories. The ol' starter page with the forty random and poorly organized links, all blinking and scrolling so you can't tell what's what. right after (black text gray backgrond) and right before (sane colored text white background) became popular "styles". Why I remember briefly, everyone thought it would be "cool" to make white (or for those of use who didn't like eye-strain, off-white) on black backgrounds. (fortunately, 'everyone' only included home pages.)
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Dave made a post earlier today here
How long before the MS version is called Absolutely Simple Syndication?
MS always gets kicked around (especially here) for doing things like this...
/.ers get as upset as they do is that Microsoft wields more power than your typical "a company" and is more like your basic "a monopoly". Naturally, this changes the answer some regarding them.
I think the problem with your question is in the set up, where you posit the hypothetical "a company". I think that the reason many
I think it also depends on how these changes effect those using the standard. Take HD Radio It adds some functionality to standard radio broadcasting but does so without interfering with my old standards based analog car stereo. This is a reasonable implementation. On the other hand, all the examples of Microsoft extending features I can think of involve breaking part of the ecosystem.
0.1 != 0.10. In versioning math, .10 is often bigger than .1. The 0.1 release was called "Phoenix" & happened in 2002.
Firefox 0.10 came 2 years later and was the so-called "preview release." and, though pre-1.0 was included and promoted as stable software on multiple platforms.
Yes, there is a difference between stable releases and unstable/testing/development releases. Firefox 0.10 was still made available to the public. If you don't want to consider it a "release," that is fine.
However, 1.0 was released on 2004-11-09, which is still before OS X.4.
Is this too late? I mean blogger is already the place to do blogging for 90% of all blogs out there. RSS is already very well defined and there are literally hundreds of apps that spit out RSS. Will microsoft's enhancements be doomed to second place? I would think even the most agressive "embrace and extend" campaign would fail here. Of course you can't fault them for trying!
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
Group 1: MORE LIKE EMBRACE AND BSOD AM I RITE?
Group 2: RSS is XML and therefore works using magic! It's not like there were eight thousand different conflicting RSS standards before!
A Vanishingly Small Number Of Voices Of Fucking Reason: You know, they released the spec for extensions under a ShareAlike Creative Commons license. They might as well have done it under the god-damned GPL. This is PROGRESS, you imbeciles.
Because ATOM - the SOAP-using, kitchen-sink-including extension to RSS - is chopped liver in MS land? It even uses their buzzwords!
Its only a problem if they thumb their nose at the namespace thing and just blithely add tags in the "default". THEN they'll have pissed off a number of people. You mean "when", right? Or are you implying Longhorn might never be released? Seriously, though, one can't criticize them for leaving open the the possibility of eXtending the eXtensible Markup Language. Not yet, anyway.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Is it just me? Or does anyone else feel a frisson of apprehension whenever they hear the words "Microsoft" and "extend" in the same sentence? They'll extend RSS, all right. They'll extend it out of the reach of any operating system that isn't named Windows.
(That's RSS as in arse). As has already been pointed out, RSS is XML and therefore extensible. In order to cope with any arbitrary extensions that anyone cares to add, why not just bolt the concept of a schema onto RSS? That way, my RSS reader would know how to parse and sort any metadata your RSS feed cared to send me, and all options are kept open. Something like that is surely better than some self-appointed overlords attempting to mandate their own extensions. It would also open up many more machine-to-machine communications possibilities.
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
We found the new feature in Windows Longhorn! We found it!
Wait...this is in Apple's Webcore already...why does MS need until late next year to steal it?
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
I have only just started reading rss feeds but it seems to me to be fairly easy to organise the list as each entry has a date field see http://slashdot.org/rss/index.rss for an obvious example, or am I missing something obvious?
I see no reason to believe that Microsoft will "basterdize" the RSS format, a format that has to be compatible with existing readers for its uptake to be guaranteed (i.e. no RSS publisher will embrace the extensions if they are incompatible with the majority of reader apps).
Really? I think you're forgetting that once it's in their OS, Microsoft's implementation is the majority of reader apps. If that wasn't enough, they've offered incentives to publishers in the past.
New company slogan?
At Microsoft, we see they never were "your base".
Microsoft: We'll play Monopoly until you get Clue!
If that is so I gotta hand it to the firefox team for making one hell of an improvment over apple's implementation. I love livebookmarks, so much more practical and usefull then the safari's use of RSS.
evil is as evil does
A. RSS wasn't invented for Firefox nor Safari - it was invented separately, then incorporated into the browsers.
B. FireFox & Safari have totally different implementations for RSS.
Hence neither copied off of the other.
C. Safari is hardly at the cutting edge when it comes to the amount of features, especially when compared with Mozila Foundation browsers which have been around longer with more contributors. Safari's strong point over feature-plenty Firefox is design and speed.
If you don't like RSS 1.0 or 2.0, just declare an RSS 3.0 (or RSS 3.14159) and publish your own spec.
Aren't many spec names trademarked, in order to prevent somebody from thinking that your "RSS 3.0" is the official update to the standard from the entity widely recognized as the maintainer of the standard?
This guy has it right on the money!
http://msdn.microsoft.com/longhorn/understanding/r ss/simplefeedextensions/
Jorgie
And I feel the other way. Safari lets me load multiple RSS feeds at once, as if they were one feed, with the most recent posts from all at the top. That way I can quickly grasp what's going on at multiple feeds, and scan the content as well.
Firefox requires me to go to the bookmarks or my bookmark bar and activate each one individually, and then only shows me the headlines, with no idea of how recent a new post is, or what its actual content is without click on it to go read the whole thing.
But, to each their own.
No logical way to organize?
They must be mistaken. Instead of RSS, they're probably thinking of what they will eventually create to compete with RSS.
Glog!
Called MRSS, the new RSS will work only on systems running Windows.
I really like Safari RSS, but I have one major complaint. About 1/3 the time, it gets the dates wrong on the new entries in feeds. Often times it thinks the date is a few days before the actual post date of the entry. I've confirmed in the RSS feed that the date is correct, but Safari manages to fuck it up.
Why can't you just sort it on the client side in a manner that suits you. In Safari RSS, I can sort by new, date, source, or title and I can search them. That gives me all the flexibility I need. Why publish a list in an RSS feed? It would be easier and better formatted in html anyway.
I just watched the channel 9 video and it looks to me like they're doing some really interesting stuff with RSS.
The extensions they're talking about are cleanly done, and actually useful.
They're also talking about a central RSS feed list within Windows, which several apps can talk to in order to extract data. So you don't have to have a list managed by thunderbird, a separate one managed by firefox, etc. - you just grab it from the OS, and you don't need to worry about fetching, parsing and so on - it just becomes a data store.
ISTM that this has good implications for users and developers. Would be a good thing to have in other OS platforms too.
Registering accounts later than some other chrisb since 1997
is there not a 'date' field in the rss schema already? can you not figure out what's new from that? does that not imply an order?? I don't understand....
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
I'm with you, and agree that Safari's RSS implementation is better... I wonder how the RSS interfaces will evolve with time though, as IE may very well do a unique spinoff different than Safari or Firefox. We may end up with a similar interface across all three, but it will take a few years.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
I don't know how on earth that got modded Insightful. If MS's implementation of RSS was to be exploited it would be done so with a malicious RSS feed and not with a virus that uses RSS to communicate. If the virus used RSS to communicate it wouldn't necessarily need MS to implement their own version RSS.
spellchecker?
;-)
themsselves?
sorry, couldn't resist...
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
> [The RSS] format has to be compatible with existing readers for its uptake to be guaranteed (i.e. no RSS publisher will embrace the extensions if they are incompatible with the majority of reader apps).
/. in 1996 when MS was planning IE 4.0:
I understand that supposedly MS is going to do this in a nice, friendly way, and all our alarm is supposedly unfounded, but where were you in the late 90s?? I suppose you posted the following on
"The HTML format has to be compatible with existing browsers for its uptake to be guaranteed (i.e. no Web publisher will embrace the extensions if they are incompatible with the majority of browsers)."
The moral of this story is, Microsoft knows Longhorn will have instant 80% marketshare (among Windows PCs) within 6 months of Longhorn's release, and then the RSS publishers will have no choice but to publish their feeds in MSRSS format, if MS chooses to bastardize the format. Don't underestimate them! That's what Netscape did, and look where they are now. The bottom line is, if MS chooses to do it, they will do it, and they will get away with it. This is true for all values of "it." No one is strong enough to stop them anymore.
-
* Do you realize how quickly PCs are replaced these days?? Dell, HP, etc PCs are being thrown away after 6-8 months because people don't know/can't be bothered to have someone spend hours removing spyware/viruses from it. They just go to dell.com, buy a new $299 or whatever after $5000 rebate piece of crap and begin the cycle again! So Windows Longhorn Home Edition will be on every one of these idiots' machines within months after release, even if MS cannot convince a single person to upgrade! Of course, many many people will pirate it (despite the inevitable claims they make every time that this version of Windows will be unpiratable), and a few will even buy it. If you remember also from the browser wars, when one comes bundled with the OS, most people won't bother to download, and/or buy and install another one as long as the bundled one is at least half-assed.
RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom, and Microsoft's proposed standard are all dialects of XML. This means each dialect is compatible with it's XML roots it may not be compatible with other dialects. If Microsoft actually honors the Sharealike thing it will be a good thing. If they do not honor it, which is not beyond the scope of their standard operating procedure, then they will likely screw up other formats. As far as there being no way to track or organize RSS feeds, my default RSS reader uses catagories where I can put specific subscriptions of my choice in. I can sort the individual stories by when they arrived, their title, their sources. I can search them using one or more keyword. I can flag them for later perusal and search. That's all I could ask.
Opera had RSS in a 7.5 beta in April 2004. 7.5 final with RSS was released in May 2004.
Clever signature text goes here.
Just before Atom reaches 1.0 and becomes an official (IETF) standard, meaning that we can finally start killing off RSS with all its flaws...
"Is there really a concern that they'll embrace and extend when they take so long to embrace?"
Yes, they embraced and extended DNS, and many other technologies, years after these technologies were widely deployed and used.
Many companies have subsequently deployed Microsoft DNS because they needed the interoperability with other Microsoft products (ADS) which they discovered they suddenly needed to manage their Windows boxes, when of course there was never any need for ADS to require any DNS changes, other than at most one name in each domain identifying the ADS servers for that domain.
Indeed it is probably better to embrace and extend established technologies, as a way of levering your way into an established market.
Without the totally unnecessary dependence on MS DNS in ADS, few would have replaced their Unix or Linux based DNS servers with MS DNS (and MS servers). Because the MS DNS technology was overly complex for the task at hand, notoriously buggy and insecure, and only ran on Microsoft servers (which still aren't enterprise quality, but more like overgrown desktop machines), in an area where 100% service availability has long been considered normal.
When people discuss 100% service availability, they discuss things like deliberately using diverse platforms for increased availability, this kind of thinking doesn't fit the Microsoft way.
It isn't clear that this particular example is "embrace and extend", not every standard change Microsoft proposes will be, but anyone dealing more than necessary with a company for which "embrace and extend" is a deliberate business strategy will get what they deserve in the long run.
This feature will be included in Longhorn.
When will we read that this featur will not be included in Longhorn after all?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
ICQ used to be the main instant messenger system...
And Netscape the main browser.
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
Push technology?
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Now, being able to subscribe to an event calendar is very handy, but there is a much simpler way - using hCalendar and Brian Suda's x2v calendar parsing tool.
I adapted the conference calendar page, to add an "hevent" to each session ( with help from Ryan and his hCalendar creator).
Now you can subscribe to it directly using the x2v link. This is available today, not in a future release of IE, and you can easily add events to your blog or webpage this way for people to subscribe to. (from my blog)
I put the firefox livebookmarks on my toolbar. they update automatically and I can scan the headlines quickly by running my mouse along the toolbar. The feed is sorted by date most recent first. If I am interested in a headline I just click on it and go. If I am not interested then I stay at the page I am at. This is exactly how I want rss to work.
evil is as evil does
Microsoft faces a huge credibility gap, which is the result of years and years of ethically questionable business practices. Any company sitting in such a powerful monopoly position would be treated with some skepticism, but phrases like "knife the baby" take a long time to forget. Microsoft's bipolar disorder when it comes to open source doesn't make them any easier to trust.
Hey Ballmer, is open source licensing the scourge of capitalism, is it a tool that can be used in conjunction with closed source, or is it a mechanism you want to subvert and use as yet another means of obstructing competition?
It is humorous to watch Microsoft trying to change its corporate DNA, a task that seems nearly impossible. The stage in Microsoft's lifecycle when they could bully their way to the top is over. Now they're sitting at the top and they have nowhere to go but down. It brings to mind a game of Diplomacy, one in which a player has succeeded in tricking everyone, only to be brought down by their combined wrath.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I do the same thing in Safari (put feeds on my toolbar). They also update automatically and show me how many new posts they have. In fact, I group similar feeds in folders, and the folder on my toolbar shows me how many total new posts there are in all the feeds in the folder. When I click on the fold, the bookmarks menu that pops down shows me the individual feeds, and then shows me a "View all RSS feeds in this folder" selection which opens them all up in one page, aggregate-style. I can view separate feeds if I like.
And these methods aren't mutually exclusive. Safari could make the feed bookmarks expandable and show the headlines as individual bookmarks like Firefox does. Firefox could let you click on the feed link itself and show all the stories in an interface like Safari, and add a "view all feeds in this folder" option to display the content in aggregate.
...as long as they can play nice, and do three things:
- Color within the lines (add their crap using a separate namespace)
- Don't break the existing spec
- Accept RSS feeds without their markup
What are the chances of that happening, though, considering their history? STL... Java... JavaScript... TCP/IP... HTTP Digest Auth... SPF... RSS?
All I want is a kind word, a warm bed and unlimited power.