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Netscape Dumps Critical File, Breaks RSS 0.9 Feeds

An anonymous reader writes "In the standard definition of RSS 0.91, there are a couple of lines referring to 'DOCTYPE' and referencing a 'dtd' spec hosted on Netscape's website. According to an article on DeviceForge.com quite a few RSS feeds around the web probably stopped working properly over the past few weeks because Netscape recently stopped hosting the critical rss-0.91.dtd file. Probably someone over at netscape.com simply thought he was cleaning up some insignificant cruft." Some explanation has been offered by a Netscape employee.

5 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Ack by Cygfrydd · · Score: 4, Funny

    I would've seen this post sooner, but my RSS feed was broken... something about a 404?

  2. Doesn't AOL own Netscape? by gravesb · · Score: 4, Funny

    And if so, why would anyone rely on AOL to make something on the web work?

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  3. HAHA by eMbry00s · · Score: 5, Funny

    Suck that, Web 2.0!

  4. Host it yourself! by nascarguy27 · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is the precise reason why I host everything myself including my own series of tubes, dubbed the Internets. I host not only every file that my site uses, but I also have a program that regularly crawls the entire Internet and compresses it onto my own distributed system. That way I can browse the Internet by myself without worrying if someone else's system will fail. Although I do need to replace systems every now and then. But that's not a problem, b/c the distributed system has 3-5 copies of the Internet, each copy in a different place. Wait, isn't their some other company that does that? I can't quite place the name.

    Seriously though, relying on some other system so your site will work is a recipe for disaster. It's similar to relying on someone to take you to work everyday. After a while, you get used to that fact that someone else is driving you that you don't even think about it. Then your driver gets deleted somehow. And you're stuck with no way to work.

    --
    Funny createSig(Witty remark, Odd reference)
    {
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    }
  5. This is a major problem, by Morky · · Score: 5, Funny

    This could seriously affect both of the guys using Netscape.