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Scripting News -- It's Even Worse Than It Appears.

About the author

A picture named daveTiny.jpgDave Winer, 56, is a software developer 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.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

"Dave was in a hurry. He had big ideas." -- Harvard.

"Dave Winer is one of the most important figures in the evolution of online media." -- Nieman Journalism Lab.

10 inventors of Internet technologies you may not have heard of. -- Royal Pingdom.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

8/2/11: Who I Am.

Contact me

scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Twitter

My sites
Recent stories

Recent links

My 40 most-recent links, ranked by number of clicks.

My bike

People are always asking about my bike.

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Here's a picture.

Calendar

January 2012
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Dec   Feb

Warning!

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FYI: You're soaking in it. :-)


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Dave Winer's weblog, started in April 1997, bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

Back in the saddle again Permalink.

I had this site blacked out for the day, but went back to full-color at approx 10PM.

A picture named cowboy.gifI did the blackout by changing the DNS mapping for scripting.com from the Apache server we usually use, to a Frontier server running a custom script that returns HTML with no content. It did have a web bug in it so I could count hits.

I thought it was wrong to do anything other than return an empty black page. If you tried to sell an idea or retain your rep with the search engines, then you really didn't black yourself out. I doubt if our friends at the MPAA would be so kind.

So much stuff broke on so many of my sites and people who use my software. Many of my images and scripts are hosted on scripting.com so that stuff broke even if it was being referenced from another domain. The problems rippled all through my little world. It was a learning opportunity.

Not sure why in the end I decided to go black. I don't think anyone really cared for any reason that mattered. A much more powerful way to go would have been to help people get their flow out of centralized corporate-owned media. But of course the people who own the media, some of whom were leading the blackout, would lose money if that happened.

# 1/18/2012; 10:09:04 PM.   .


© Copyright 1997-2012 Dave Winer. Last build: 1/18/2012; 10:15:01 PM. "It's even worse than it appears."

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