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Microsoft To Extend RSS

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the yay-another-microsoft-standard dept.

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."

73 of 375 comments (clear)

  1. Bye, bye RSS .... by Luscious868 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Repeat after me "embrace and extend" ....

    1. Re:Bye, bye RSS .... by CaymanIslandCarpedie · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This isn't meant to defend anyone or deamonize anyone, just an honest question (I realize /. isn't the place for that type of thing ;-)

      MS always gets kicked around (especially here) for doing things like this, so my question is:
      If a company is developing a product (RSS product seems an obvious example), and after exploring and using the standard meant for that type of product they see additional functionality which would be useful but isn't covered by the standards. What SHOULD they do? Just forget about additional functionality and live with the standard? Submit a request to the standard body, hope they agree, and wait for it to become part of the standard?

      I'm honestly curious about this because this type of action by MS is fuzzy in my head. Is it really that bad? What should they do?

      --
      "reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
    2. Re:Bye, bye RSS .... by SimplexO · · Score: 2, Funny

      And that's better than the Open Source business plan, how?

      1. Steal/Copy Idea
      2. ???
      3. Profit

      --
      Get Firefox!
    3. Re:Bye, bye RSS .... by rsborg · · Score: 2
      And that's better than the Open Source business plan, how?

      1. Steal/Copy Idea
      2. ???
      3. Profit

      Dude, wtf are you talking about? Open Source is not about profit... sure, you can make one if you replace ??? with services/etc. but profit is not strived for or even wanted in some OS products.

      Yeah, I know, YHBT and all.

      --
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    4. Re:Bye, bye RSS .... by Lagged2Death · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This of course begs the question as to whether MS's extensions will in fact be useful.

      RSS was intended to collect news. Now MS is planning to make it show updates to ordered lists - something it was never intended to do in the first place. Is that really such a great idea? Is it likely to lead to a widely-compatible, stable and well-designed system?

      Wouldn't it be simpler to keep the frequently-updated list on a plain old web site, and put linked update notices in the RSS feed? What problem are we trying to solve here?

    5. Re:Bye, bye RSS .... by wilsone8 · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's not embrace and extend when the guy that created the RSS standard (Dave Winer), has a post up today about how Microsoft specifically asked him if it would be ok to extend the spec before going down this path and how he thought this would be a good addition to the RSS spec.

      http://www.reallysimplesyndication.com/2005/06/22# a634

      From the article: "The story begins in March of this year. I got a call from Robert Scoble saying there was a group on the MSIE team that wants to extend RSS to handle lists. I was immediately supportive of this, I told Scoble that some people think I'm conservative about extending RSS, but I'm actually liberal. The only thing I don't like is when people invent new ways of expressing data that RSS already defines. He assured me this isn't what was going on."

      --
      The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do. - B.F. Skinner
    6. Re:Bye, bye RSS .... by FidelCatsro · · Score: 2, Informative

      The w3c and other bodies were Created to standardise the web (standardise as in make equally accessible , not as in the more scary all the same connotations).
      Every other thing must go by them for peer review and inclusion into our standards system for the world wide web. Frequently MS has just said yah-boo sucks to the whole idea and implemented many many changes to the standards (many time totally proprietary changes) for inclusion in their systems .
      Which is all well and good if you a small company (at least smaller than total market dominance) , if your small your browser can become a test bed for ideas, unfortunately the case with MS is that MSIE has become a defecato standard by nature of their monopoly so their changes have become dominant throughout the internet.
      This causes a whole host of problems for web developers and browser makers , even the average person who uses an alternate system. It was a case of use MSs way or don't browse.
      Lately this is greatly alleviated due to more common acceptance of the standards( IE: more people in the know have got to positions of influence)
      But still , I'm sure many people have come across sites which refuse to act well on all browsers
      Now its dammed hard to get things to work the way you want them on all the browsers because of this (again this is far less of a problem now but still an issue)

      What as i understand it MS do is this ,Submit change to W3C , wait , include it in browser anyway , See browser take over market due to windows dominance and its default inclusion and peoples lack of knowledge of alternates, try to force the W3Cs hand into accepting the standard.
      They may have a great extension , but the way they do it is totally unacceptable .
      The internet can never be a democracy for the standards , but the w3c is comprised of members from through out the industry (including MS) and its the best we have to ensure fairness and equality.
      Many folks have a few problems with some of the ways the w3c operate (I myself have a problem with their documentation and write ups of the standards.) but it sure beats having a way forced down my throat by a convicted abusive monopoly

      --
      The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
    7. Re:Bye, bye RSS .... by Baricom · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm honestly curious about this because this type of action by MS is fuzzy in my head. Is it really that bad? What should they do?

      A promise to not patent whatever it is they're doing would be an excellent start.

    8. Re:Bye, bye RSS .... by jpickett · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And if you read how Microsoft is handling their extentions, frankly I don't see what the issue is. So someone thought of a way to make RSS potentially better, and they're sharing it with other people.

      As I see it MS had two options:

      1) Create their own proprietary standard and have everyone bitch at them or;
      2) Use an existing standard, try and OPENLY build on it to do what they want, and only have retards like Slashdot minions bitch about it.

      Sure it's flamebait but I'm sick of this crap. Also wilsone8, I'm not directing this to you, just all the others that don't care to educate themselves first.

    9. Re:Bye, bye RSS .... by JediJorgie · · Score: 2, Informative

      ok, guess I just learned to make sure I have *text* selected...

      here it is as I actually typed it:

      Jeremy Wright just posted a comment over at

      http://www.digital-web.com/news/2005/06/microsoft_ to_take_rss_five_steps_backwards/#comment1361

      and pointed out the fact that the stuff MS is doing it actually fairly syndication agnostic. (Read: 'not just rss') They HAD to extend RSS to get the functionality they wanted that already exists the ATOM spec.

      So if you are worried that they will some how *screw you* if you try to use their extensions, just use ATOM and the functionality is already there.

      BTW I think the fact that their extension is being released under the same CC license as the RSS2.0 spec should earn them a little credit, but then again this is /. so I don't expect the 'regulars' to even notice.

      Here is the CC info that bother the original RSS2.0 spec and the MS extensions have been released under:
      "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/

      Jorgie

    10. Re:Bye, bye RSS .... by Alsee · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'll tell you what, how about we come back to this issue in about 9 to 18 months and we can discuss whether or not Microsoft PATENTED this extention to RSS?

      And yes, I know the bottom of their page promises to "offer a royalty-free patent license on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and conditions to any such patent". Care to wager whether it would be essentially the same DELIBERATLY SABOTAGED license that Microsoft slapped on their SenderID system? You know, the royalty-free patent license on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and conditions that just so happens to PROHIBIT use by GPL and most other open source software? The license that conflicts with the GPL in at least three ways that I counted? And I'm not even a lawyer... so I'd expect there are probably even more conflicts in there that I didn't spot.

      Of course I could be wrong. It's certainly possible that this won't appear amongst the SEVERAL THOUSAND software patents that Microsoft is now filing each year. Or if they do patent it, it's certainly possible that Microsoft will come up with and use some BRAND NEW patent license that doesn't conflict with the GPL and other open source projects. And it's certainly possible that we'll finally find those WMD's in Iraq. And it's certainly possible that SCO will suddenly reveal those millions of lines of stolen SystemV code.

      Yep, it's perfectly possible that you're right and it's just a bunch of whiney uneducated Slashdot minions unfairly bitching against Microsoft without cause.

      -

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  2. How? by Conspiracy_Of_Doves · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So how exactly will they be changing the standard to make it incompatable with non-Microsoft readers?

    --

    Technoli
    1. Re:How? by saintp · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Special features to interact with Exchange and/or Outlook.

      --
      Another one bites the dust
    2. Re:How? by Reverend528 · · Score: 5, Funny

      They're going to add a "Marquee" tag so that rss readers can now support scrolling headnlines.

      --
      Badass Resumes
    3. Re:How? by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 4, Funny

      Special features to interact with Exchange and/or Outlook.

      Whee, RSS Viruses! :D

    4. Re:How? by TwistedSpring · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Since RSS is an XML-based standard, it would be relatively simple to add new functionality to it without breaking existing implementations.

    5. Re:How? by Decaff · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Special features to interact with Exchange and/or Outlook.

      That won't break the use of RSS with existing software. RSS is a dialect of XML. XML is designed to be extended without breaking existing uses. This is why XML can be so useful as a data format - software that uses an XML dialect will still work after the dialect is extended.

      I'm not defending Microsoft here, but worries about incompatibilities are almost certainly unfounded because of the way XML works.

    6. Re:How? by LilMikey · · Score: 2, Funny

      That won't break the use of RSS with existing software. RSS is a dialect of XML. XML is designed to be extended without breaking existing uses. This is why XML can be so useful as a data format - software that uses an XML dialect will still work after the dialect is extended.

      Yes, and HTML should work in any browser.

      --
      LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
    7. Re:How? by TedTschopp · · Score: 2, Insightful

      HTML is not XML
      XHTML is XML

      --
      Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
  3. plenty of time by CausticPuppy · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  4. I'm sure they won't jack up the spec by sdriver · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm sure they will add stuff that makes sense as well!

  5. As it should be. by TheBrownShow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...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.

    1. Re:As it should be. by DaHat · · Score: 2, Interesting

      To quote one member of the team: "RSS is too good to just be in browsers and news aggregators" and he is exactly right. Why have multiple applications reinventing the wheel to do the same thing when different applications can do their own thing with the data, but leave many aspects of it up to the main system.

      --
      Help Brendan pay off his student loans
    2. Re:As it should be. by Winterblink · · Score: 2, Insightful

      (A bit offtopic here) I find it interesting how the internet went from a primarily text-based medium, and suddenly exploded with MEDIA MEDIA MEDIA everywhere. We ended up with horrble frankensites like IGN and CNet, with maybe 1% actual content per page, the rest being graphical and media fluff. And now I hear what you say a LOT, where people are sick of going to sites and being overloaded with junk, and trying to find the buried content. Lots of people are finding the minimalist standpoint to be a valid one (my website for instance is pretty minimalist in that regard).

      Back to RSS, I think we'll see the same thing happen. We'll rejoince at the BROADBAND MEDIA XPERIENCE it will bring us with all these extensions, but it will implode under its own weight. I'm just hoping it will return to its roots intead of fizzling out as another internet neato thing du jour.

      --
      "I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
      -Hoban Washburn
    3. Re:As it should be. by TheBrownShow · · Score: 5, Informative

      A sensible ordering/dating system would make RSS a great deal more powerful, and a great deal more sensible.

      There already IS a dating sytem in RSS, see the optional channel elements "pubDate" and "lastBuildDate" in the RSS 2.0 Spec at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss

      Oh god. This was rated 5?
      Now that's not very nice at all, at least I did my homework :-P

    4. Re:As it should be. by chris234 · · Score: 2, Funny

      (A bit offtopic here) I find it interesting how the internet went from a primarily text-based medium, and suddenly exploded with MEDIA MEDIA MEDIA everywhere. We ended up with horrble frankensites like IGN and CNet, with maybe 1% actual content per page, the rest being graphical and media fluff. And now I hear what you say a LOT, where people are sick of going to sites and being overloaded with junk, and trying to find the buried content. Lots of people are finding the minimalist standpoint to be a valid one (my website for instance is pretty minimalist in that regard).

      I like to refer to this stuff as nontent.

  6. Other RSS uses by nizcolas · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.
    1. Re:Other RSS uses by cei · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah, but isn't that really all RSS is? Another format of the RDF that was used for channels?

      --
      This sig intentionally left justified.
  7. By keeping track of what's being fed by kwilliamyoungatl · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You can add DRM and other "features". Uggh.

  8. What will they really do? by ravenspear · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:What will they really do? by DaHat · · Score: 2, Informative

      Their extensions will be released under the Creative Commons License, how about you get some facts before you gripe.

      --
      Help Brendan pay off his student loans
    2. Re:What will they really do? by DaHat · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'm getting my facts from an interview video on Channel 9 where they sit down and talk with the team who built this system, as well as a demonstration of the system.

      You are right though, the Creative Commons is not a software license, it is a license for documents, including specifications. The original RSS specs were published under the CC, and in keeping in line with that because of their talks with the original developers of RSS.

      --
      Help Brendan pay off his student loans
    3. Re:What will they really do? by TwistedSpring · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why is this relevant? You think Microsoft would change the standard so that no existing RSS reader on any platform could handle it? That's bullshit. Since RSS is based on XML it's easy to extend and add features to it that will simply be ignored by existing readers.

      Microsoft are big on XML. Their new office format will be completely open and XML compliant. 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). The most Microsoft will do is say "Hey, you get a better RSS experience if you use the reader included in Longhorn since it is compatible with the new RSS extensions introduced by Microsoft".

      I think this is solely to do with improving usability and enhancing user experience, which is what Microsoft desperately need to do if Longhorn is going to beat OS X, and as someone who's written RSS parsers I welcome this addition to the standard, it seems like a really practical and useful idea.

    4. Re:What will they really do? by cei · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Looks like the RSS 2.0 spec is under Share Alike, actually. Ya learn something new every day...

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      This sig intentionally left justified.
    5. Re:What will they really do? by HishamMuhammad · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Microsoft are big on XML. Their new office format will be completely open and XML compliant. Do you call releasing a file format in a GPL-incompatible way "completely open"?? (Notice I didn't refer to GPL-incompatible code. There's a lot of GPL-incompatible free software out there, and they are still free software. File formats, however, are a different story. To be open, they need to be implementation-independent. Not only in their specification but also on their licensing.)

      --
      The filesystem is the package manager
  9. Re:Here we go again... by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 3, Funny

    Apparently it's going to be called SSS - Sorta Simple Syndication.

    --
    -1 Uncomfortable Truth
  10. Microsoft "Breaks" RSS by gbulmash · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Whenever Microsoft "extends" a standard, they always seem to extend it in ways so use of their extensions makes your page/script/applet inoperable with competing products that support the internationally approved standard. So should the title of this article actually be "Microsoft Breaks RSS"?

    - Greg

    --
    Start a happiness pandemic
    1. Re:Microsoft "Breaks" RSS by Utopia · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The RSS standard itself allows for extensions.
      The extensions themselves can be standardized.

      Microsoft is not breaking the standard.




    2. Re:Microsoft "Breaks" RSS by TrappedByMyself · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Whenever Microsoft "extends" a standard, they always seem to extend it in ways so use of their extensions makes your page/script/applet inoperable with competing products that support the internationally approved standard.

      You mean like how they extended JavaScript to include XMLHttpRequest? Yeah, that whole emergence of Ajax has been a disaster.

      --

      Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
  11. Innovation by repetty · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's only reasonable to expect innovation like this from the company that invented the Internet.

    Microsoft kicks ass!

  12. Longhorn? What's that? by oliver+clozoff · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  13. In Longhorn huh? by tktk · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Hopefully by the time Longhorn comes out, we'll have moved onto something better.

    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?

  14. Re:Microsoft is The Follower by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 2, Insightful


    How long can this be maintained?

    As long as we let them.

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    ____

    ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

  15. I can't wait by m50d · · Score: 2, Funny

    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
  16. Seen this before by Bronz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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 /.

  17. Sorting the data? by taskforce · · Score: 2, Informative
    "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."

    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.)

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    My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
  18. Gee, that's funny ... by w98 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    no logical way to organize that information in a way [to] keep track of what is being fed to them

    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 ...

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    my geeklog
  19. We prefer the phrase.... by Noksagt · · Score: 2

    Embrace and Extinguish (TM)

  20. Discussion and Demos from the team on Channel9 by km790816 · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=8053 3

    Amazingly good discussion and demos!

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    A speech...
  21. Re:Microsoft is The Follower by Shag · · Score: 2, Informative
    They have done it from day 1, nearly 25 years ago, in purchasing QDOS.
    Young whippersnapper! Day 1 was more like 30 years ago, when they took BASIC (which had been developed a decade earlier at Dartmouth) and ported it to... what was it, the Altair? Then they licensed it, presumably for money - and that was Microsoft's true "innovation" - taking something that people had created for free and finding a way to charge money for it.
    --
    Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
  22. Re:Safari's RSS? How about Firefox's by learn+fast · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, Safari's had it since 2004-07-28 from which the Firefox team may have gotten the idea in the first place.

  23. Embrace, Extend, Patent by Albanach · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Is't microsoft as usual...
    1. Embrace
    2. Extend
    3. Patent
    4. Profit

    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.

  24. Re:Safari's RSS? How about Firefox's by Noksagt · · Score: 2, Informative
    I referred only to the RELEASED software. I'm sure that IE RSS is already written too. You couldn't use Safari's RSS on 2004-07-28.

    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)
    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24407 8
    (note: not linkied because mozilla's bugzilla doesn't like slashdot referrals.
  25. Re:Here we go again... by LittleGuernica · · Score: 3, Funny

    Are YOU sure it's not "$$$"?

  26. Maybe if they froze Longhorn's feature set by Deagol · · Score: 3, Interesting
    they'd get the damned thing released.

    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
    1. Re:Maybe if they froze Longhorn's feature set by hacker · · Score: 3, Interesting
      "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."

      Have you ever considered that this might just be a marketing ruse by Microsoft to get their competitors (Apple, the OSS community, etc.) to slow down on focusing their efforts, because "..well, we have a couple of years before Longhorn is released, whats the rush?"

      Seriously, what if they released Longhorn in December of this year, with all of the features they've previously claimed were pulled from it? (WinFS, podcasting, IE7, etc.)

      This is a very VERY common marketing move, and I'm surprised nobody has seen through it yet. You publically announce that your product is being delayed, so your competitors relax a bit, then you announce some key feature of your product was dropped, etc. and your competition smirks and goes out and celebrates... and then you release the full product, WITH the "dropped" features on Monday.

      Your competition crumbles and cries in the corner.

    2. Re:Maybe if they froze Longhorn's feature set by Doros · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That doesn't make sense to me at all. Are they secretly letting their stockholders know that their next product isn't going to just be a new UI? How about all the 3rd-party software companies that need APIs before the release? Also, many of the features they originally promised are now available in alternative OSes. I also can't think of an example where a software company (or any other company) used this move.

    3. Re:Maybe if they froze Longhorn's feature set by ky11x · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Parent is overrated.

      This is not a "common" marketing move because it makes no sense. You cannot "lull" your competitors into slowing down -- your competitors do not react to your announcements, they react to what they perceive the market wants and what they think you are doing, not what you say you are doing. Neither does it help to suddenly pop something onto the market when you have been telling IT managers for months to prepare for a release in 2006/2007. MS makes its living by allowing IT shops to phase and plan for purchases and upgrades. Do you think anyone is going to buy Longhorn in "December," if MS magically released it, when they were planning to upgrade their infrastructure and develop and test for Longhorn in 2007? You can bet that they'll wait until 2007 to purchase Longhorn even if it were released early.

      So, if this scheme were so "common," how about some examples?

  27. Re:Speaking of Microsoft and RSS by IdahoEv · · Score: 2, Funny
    Any recommendations for an RSS plug-in/add-on for Outlook?


    Yeah. Thunderbird.
    --
    I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
  28. Good News! by bheerssen · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

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    (Score: -1, Stupid)
  29. Goodbye RSS by Szaman2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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
  30. Text should be enough for everybody... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  31. Re:Microsoft is The Follower/No unusual by plopez · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

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    putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
  32. SSSSLOLSUCKTOWN by lullabud · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sorta Simple Syndication Supporting Lengthy Ordered Lists So Users Can Keep Track Of What's New.

  33. RSS Viruses by lullabud · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That get updates every hour on new ways to exploit your system.

  34. How about "may not break the standard"? by jfengel · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  35. 12 step program. by lullabud · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

  36. Just like Krb5 by jlrobins_uncc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

  37. Winer's perspective by Jesse_132 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Dave made a post earlier today here

  38. Too Late? by razmaspaz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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!

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    I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
  39. A summary of Slashdot comments: by ArmpitMan · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:A summary of Slashdot comments: by Baricom · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't believe it is. Their disclaimer is that if they find any patents infringed, "Microsoft also agrees to offer a royalty-free patent license on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and conditions to any such patent claims for the purpose of publishing and consuming the extensions set out in the specification."

      Every instance of "reasonable and non-discriminatory terms", such as those of the Office XML formats, has made it impossible to use in GPL software in the past.

      Now, if their patent license for these RSS extensions doesn't do that, then I'll be impressed.

  40. Opera's RSS... by hkmwbz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Opera had RSS in a 7.5 beta in April 2004. 7.5 final with RSS was released in May 2004.

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    Clever signature text goes here.