About the author
Dave Winer, 56, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and editor of the Scripting News weblog. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.
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A deficit of chutzpah 
When Jerry Garcia died, sixteen years ago, I wrote that when a big tree falls it creates a lot of room for new growth.
So when Steve Jobs died, it created an even larger space, because his existence was much closer in space to my own.
Maybe that's why I now feel entitled to be more bold and daring. Perhaps because there's a deficit of chutzpah in the nearby universe. Reality has become too real. We must fix that! 
Chutzpah is a closer approximation to ego in capturing what makes a product driver good or bad. You have to be daring, tempt the gods. You need a certain amount of hubris to think that you can bring something big and new into the world.
Why not.
It's not as if any of us get out of this alive.
Or you could just tell the users to...
Brent Simmons explains how RSS synchronization would work if you wanted to use five different RSS-reading apps on different devices. It sounds like a nightmare. I would never ever in a million years attempt to develop this. It's a million times more complex than RSS itself. Bad use of your energies as a developer.
Sometimes you just have to say no to users. No, we don't do that. If you want that feature feel free to get X, where X is the name of an app that promises to provide the annoying functionality. Especially when there's such a simple solution to the problem that requires the user basically giving up nothing.
For 10 points, what's the solution? Expand this heading on the story page for the answer.
PS: I had lunch today with Chris Anderson of CouchBase. I bet he'd say you could do a fine job of sychronization with CouchDB.
