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Sjoerd Visscher's OPML Loader web app loads OPML docs and allows you to browse them in outline style, with expand-collapse, in the browser. Screen shot. Nice. Glenn Fleishman: The Pen is a Sword. Glenn suggests that the Times' involvement may have shifted the outcome of the interop work. So, what if it did? Perhaps having reporters at a baseball game shifts the outcome. Does that mean they can report a different score? Did you ever think you could be this happy again?  I've been thinking about next steps in SOAP 1.1 interop. We seem to be getting through the wire level, so the next thing is to have a set of criteria for application-level interop. I understand that there are lots of potential uses for SOAP, but our interest is in the Web as a writing environment. I also understand that the world revolves around Microsoft until we prove otherwise. So here's the benchmark I propose. First, deliver a multi-vendor SOAP-based writing-publishing system that uses no Microsoft software. Then switch out the non-Microsoft components with Microsoft pieces, where they exist, one at a time, and have it still work. Scoble is examining issues of integrity. "If I cheat on my wife, and don't tell her, and she never asks, isn't that just as bad as lying to her about it if she asks?" Bill Appleton: "Over 15 years ago MacWorld sent a photographer all the way out to Tennessee to get a photo of me for some reason. The photographer was nice and we took some pictures, and then he wanted me to pose next to a 30 foot cow in front of a local milk company. He said it was just for fun and they would never use it. Of course, they did. The caption was: 'Bill Appleton: A step ahead of the herd.' The lesson here is: if you don't want your picture in front of a large cow, don't stand there." Bill is the author of SuperCard. When you use a piece of software that isn't being updated, every time a new version of the OS comes out you wonder "Is this the one that won't run my favorite program?" MORE, which was last released ten years ago, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, has become something of a Methuselah. Takes a lickin, keeps on tickin. (Thanks to Lee Hinde for the screen shot.) Paolo Marcucci has a Visual Basic script that converts a Word document to OPML. He says "Next step is importing a OPML file in Word, rebuilding the document format, and using Simon's function to pack it into a SOAP message." After the article in the NY Times has sunk in, I no longer read the editorial page of the Times with any idea that there's a philosophy behind it, or any integrity. After the dust has settled, after talking with one of the other people who was interviewed by the Times for Monday's article, I know that in this case, the thesis, the "news" was entirely a Times invention. Glenn Fleishman, who I respect, makes excuses for them. I don't accept the excuses. The article was about my views. It wasn't an accurate reflection of my views, and there's no excuse for that. On April 4, I wrote a public piece where I said: "Last week at this time I was uncertain of SOAP interop, now I'm optimistic. It's been a fantastic week of negotiation and cooperation, with ups and downs for sure, lots of misunderstandings, but we seem to have gotten through it and arrived at the ending I was hoping for -- software running in widely different environments, some open source, some commercial, some from Microsoft, and all of it working together." That piece ran five days before the Times piece and totally contradicts their thesis. Clearly they were reading my pieces (the Times piece was a stitched-together set of quotes from my essays). They should have changed the theme of the piece, or they should have dropped the story. The path they took had no integrity. It is so frustrating that the mission we're on has so much integrity, and that the Times, which is supposed to be a source of integrity, took a serious chance at screwing it up. For what purpose? I sent an email to Markoff. "I want to bring integrity back to software, and your integrity is part of this. How can I get Microsoft to play fair when you give them all the ammo they need to say the system isn't fair. They're right about that. I gave it some more thought and dammit, I agree with Charles, you are carrying an axe, and I have no faith that you would report on the good news when we really deliver it, which it looks like we're doing. If Microsoft pulled a stunt like the one you did, I'd be all over them. I decided that I can have no integrity if I don't call you on this." The cynical view is that they spelled my name right and the ink is good for my company. Well, I'm not a cynic. Sue me. I hate cynics. A publication with a lot less rep than the Times ran an excellent piece about my philosophy in this area. Check it out. This truly reflects what I think is going on.
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© Copyright 1997-2005 Dave Winer. The picture at the top of the page may change from time to time. Previous graphics are archived. Previous/Next |
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