Scripting News - Latest Comments

Re: Where is RSS? (Scripting News)

scott — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:48:09 -0000

RSS 2.0 is "dead" because it is a proprietary format controlled by a single person.

Re: An open letter to Google. (Scripting News)

dave — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:40:26 -0000

BTW, Taylor Maclaurin isn't really your name is it?

http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/IntroductionT...

Dave

Re: Where is RSS? (Scripting News)

bpedro — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:47:40 -0000

You say "RSS will form the basis for the open distributed version of Twitter". I'd say that RSS *is already* the basis for an open distributed version of twitter, facebook and so on.

So, what's missing here? Simple: someone please create a feed reader where I can also directly publish to my blog. Better yet, WordPress.org or any other blogging tool could have an embedded feed reader.

What would happen if we already had that? Well, I could be reading this post on my feed reader (aka distributed twitter) and then I could directly write a post on my blog replying to this post (aka distributed retweet or reply). This post would then receive a trackback linking to my original post and everybody would be happy.

Can we do it today? Yes, with minimum effort I would say, because all the pieces of software have already been written.

Re: An open letter to Google. (Scripting News)

kidmercury — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:42:28 -0000

you won this beef, dave, no doubt about it. keep on rockin' in the free world and don't let the haters get you down.

Re: Where is RSS? (Scripting News)

kidmercury — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:36:36 -0000

great post dave. the fact that mikey honestly thinks rss is dead, or that the question is even worth asking, reveals little more than the fact that mikey is misunderstanding the role of RSS. of course you already know that. :)

i agree with your vision on RSS being used to create distributed twitter. that is the way it should be IMHO. i sometimes think the impatience of those seeking profits hinders this vision, as it is a longer route that requires more patience and cannot easily be purchased simply by raising a lot of money. nevertheless i think it is the route that is more sustainable, more valuable for users, and ultimately even more profitable for all.

Re: An open letter to Google. (Scripting News)

dave — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:06:04 -0000

This was a letter to Google, not a letter to Taylor Maclaurin. That was your
clue.

Re: An open letter to Google. (Scripting News)

Taylor Maclaurin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:25:18 -0000

I never said, nor implied that my time was "wasted," just that I had to get halfway down the page to find out that this entire post was about something I didn't really care about. I wouldn't have replied if I weren't at leisure to do so, just as you wouldn't have approved the "pointless" comment if you didn't find it (or your subsequent reply) not so pointless after all. If you insist on more direct constructive criticism, I'll happily provide such.

1. Please do the same.
2. Besides the aforementioned comma splice, you also begged the question. By placing "just" within the sentence you implied that "just" a person is incapable of dissimulating an institution. Gandhi might disagree. If you want to approach the situation from a more capitalist standpoint, Bill Gates might disagree as well. This exemplifies a case where Bill Gates is the symbol of an institution and what it stands for.
3. In the latter part of the sentence, "Google services" should either be "Google's services" as they are services owned (and subsequently provided) by the possessive, or "Google Services" in reference to a specific product or department within Google. Since no such product or department exists or is implied to exist, "Google Services" cannot be a proper noun and thus I would suggest defaulting to the former "Google's services."
4. I'm not particularly sure what you were trying to get across with this point. Is it that you're rendered incapable of competing with Google due to the fact that you were a former shareholder? This is a weak play on the morals of the reader to not implicate you as the “bad guy.” It's also inane due to the key word “former.” Recall, a traitor is a former ally.
5. “I think...” implies what follows it is an opinion, whereas Google being a large company or not is a fact. That is, Google's size can be quantified with various parameters, from the number of employees to annual revenue. I'm a huge fan of moral relativism, so your division of individuals into groups of “the good, the bad, and the otherwise” doesn't particularly appeal to me. However, I can contest your judging everyone on an individual basis due to your reference to DeWitt Clinton as “a Google guy,” and not by his name. Why would you do that? My conclusion would be because, “that's how you were thinking of him.” If you'd prefer a deeper meaning of the symbolism between Clinton and Google, you can refer to Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation.
6. I can only ask, if you don't care, then why is this even on your list? Of what relevance is it to your subsequent criticism?
7. Yes, “now.” Finally, at the seventh point, almost halfway into your diatribe, we arrive at the actual topic. Why wasn't this post titled “An Open Letter to Google About PubSubHubBub?”
8. Again, where's the meat of your argument here? You just basically say, “I thought about doing it myself, but I was too lazy.”
9. Maybe you should have given Google your suggestions directly, or written this “letter,” with significantly more detail, at an earlier time? “Do this better,” isn't particularly constructive.
10. While I agree that software, protocols, algorithms, etc. should be as simple as they need to be, something being difficult to describe does not imply that thing being is also complex. In fact, I find generalizations are usually less complex ideas, but are significantly more difficult to explain. As an example (or an exercise in futility depending on your mindset and local educational system), attempt to explain the facets of modern (abstract) algebra to a high school student.
11. Your argument here appears to be, “Listen to me because I'm right.” I would suggest rephrasing using your credentials to substantiate how you “know a lot” about the adoption of complex technologies and what experience has made you “good at it.” Do, however, keep in mind that some complex technologies are able to swim upstream towards standardization and common acceptance. For example, XML came to be adopted as a standard over Sexps, even given their contrasting levels of complexity in parsing.
12. Ignoring big companies and making meaningful web-based software is actually deceptively hard to do. PHP, the most popular web-focused language is supported by Zend. Python is heavily invested into by Google. Java has Sun/Oracle. Apache has several corporate sponsors. Linux development is partially fueled by Red Hat, HP, IBM, Canonical, Nokia, Novell, and many, many more relatively big companies. The web platform most probably wouldn't be what it is today without the influence and support of corporate contributors.
13. “I see that in a lot of things Google does.” Like what? You give no examples. You don't actually expect us to take your word on it, do you?
14. Due to your lack of supporting evidence in the preceding section, I'm not convinced Google is at-odds against RSS.
15. While I can respect your opinion, in seeing you make an open letter to Google, I would expect, as you are a computer scientist (as I would from any other mathematician or scientist), a sufficient – preferably overwhelming – amount of evidence to substantiate most (if not all) of your claims. This evidence is lacking. I implore you to revise and add it. Further, such a debate should not deviate into personal qualms. That is, I should not have to, as you say, “convince you,” so much as to discredit your argument by finding contradictory evidence to your claims.
16. Is it “making the web not suck?” If so, that's an interest we all share.

Re: An open letter to Google. (Scripting News)

dave — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:49:51 -0000

Wow. I'm shocked and in awe of your commitment to excellence

And you kept wasting your time by posting a pointless comment!

That's dedication to incompetence and nincompoopery! :-)

Re: An open letter to Google. (Scripting News)

Taylor Maclaurin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:47:32 -0000

This isn't a letter. It's a numbered list. Not only that, it's not even coherent. Your second item is a comma splice. Two separate sentences should be delimited with a period, not a comma. Did you know it took to almost halfway down your numbered list for me to even realize this "letter" was in reply to a topic I didn't care about? That's cruel.

Re: Coolest software of the decade? (Scripting News)

interstar — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:43:45 -0000

Do you know http://jakeapp.com/ ? It's meant to be a free, distributed version of Dropbox using the Jabber protocol.

Re: An open letter to Google. (Scripting News)

Rosenberg — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:22:10 -0000

Dave, I agree with your statement that "voice conversation is valuable". I'd appreciate it if you'd pick up the phone so that we can resolve the less-than-ideal interactions that we've had. Thanks.

Re: Where is RSS? (Scripting News)

dave — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:42:04 -0000

You're probably right about that. We'll see. :-)

This is the real work we have to do. It's so sad to see it all get hung up
in the old stupid fighting over little crapola.

Re: Where is RSS? (Scripting News)

Jeff Luszcz — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:35:26 -0000

The usefulness of twitter is 50% following the status updates of people you follow and 50% the ability to search real time information from everyone else even if you don't follow them.

For example, there's a helicopter over my neighborhood once a week. I can search twitter to get a pretty good feeling why most of the time.
I don't see any competing online service that gets me that information when I need it.

Re: An open letter to Google. (Scripting News)

dave — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:13:16 -0000

Two things:

1. I do support Atom, where ever its relevant. River2, for example, reads Atom feeds.

2. I don't understand why you won't pick up the phone. Your first statement was tantalizing. I don't think you're right that anyone is waiting for me to do anything, but you imply that I could do something to unlock something. My main goal these days is to create a distributed network that does more or less what Twitter does. I don't care how that happens. I don't know why you think I would care. That's why voice conversation is valuable.

Re: An open letter to Google. (Scripting News)

dewittclinton — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:03:39 -0000

Fair enough, I can see your perspective about RSS relative to Atom.

I will disagree that Atom didn't add several very important technical improvements. I wrote about a few of them here a few years ago (before joining Google, in fact) and it turns out that those improvements are essential to enable certain advancements in the federate stream:

http://blog.unto.net/work/on-rss-and-atom/

Hope that helps clarify why I think Atom is important, and why I think it would be awesome if you'd support it as well.

Thanks, Dave!

-DeWitt

Re: An open letter to Google. (Scripting News)

dave — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:57:12 -0000

I'm going to stay out of the whole business about who you speak for and when -- but the question that Arrington asked of Costolo was about RSS, so my answer was about RSS too.

I'm not in the business of diluting RSS, so I would probably err on the side of simplifying things when they're more complex, but I never ever in a million years would change the name of RSS to something more complex.

To answer your question -- Yes, there is another version of RSS called Atom. That's how the world sees it. It's not different from RSS, it doesn't do anything that RSS doesn't already do. It's just another variant, an unfortunate *little* tax we all have to pay.

Re: An open letter to Google. (Scripting News)

dewittclinton — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:36:40 -0000

Hey, I'm that "Google guy," so I should probably respond...

Here's the Twitter comment that started this: http://twitter.com/dewitt/status/5898801781

It read, "If @davewiner stopped equating distributed open networks with RSS and OPML specifically, he'd immediately unify a huge community."

But first I want to clarify something. I was speaking as a technologist and software engineer, as someone who is working to build a distributed open web (http://openwebfoundation.org/2009/11/introducin...), and as someone who is actually a rather ardent supporter of Dave Winer and his work.

What I wasn't doing, however, was speaking on behalf of my employer, at least not intentionally.

So I frankly found it more than a little disconcerting that Dave immediately responded with "To @dewitt -- your employer is out of synch with the world, not the other way. I'm doing you a favor by pulling you back to where we all are."

I hadn't mentioned Google at all, so I felt it unfair to attack my employer rather than respond to me as an individual.

That said, I actually disagree with a number of the sentiments Dave raises here, regardless of who signs my paycheck.

My point with the tweet that started this all (again, having nothing to do with Google), is that so many of the exciting advancements around syndicated and distributed open networks are based on Atom, isn't it time for Dave to start acknowledging them too?

Re: Where is RSS? (Scripting News)

cshotton — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:34:48 -0000

Can't predict what exact form the final, distributed tweetnet will take, but I really wish Twitter had stuck with their initial support for XMPP. It's absolutely perfect for sending realtime, bidirectional, structured messages between peers. You could certainly piggyback RSS payloads on top of it much more efficiently than HTTP with all of its synchronous idiosyncrasies.

I think one thing hobbling RSS in the minds of some people now is its close link and assumed dependence on HTTP. But nothing says RSS has to move over HTTP and in a perfect world, we'd have a more symmetric set of connections between our desktops (like XMPP) than HTTP affords. If RSS flowed over those sorts of pipes, the thought would never cross Arrington's mind to ask if it was dead.

Re: Coolest software of the decade? (Scripting News)

arthole — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:37:47 -0000

what is up with the pictures? have you discovered Spirited Away?

Miyazaki's work is wonderful. so much good stuff. I think Spirited Away is one of the great movies I've seen. You may want to check out Princess Mononoke. It's good too. Miyazaki's comic, Nausicaa is in the pantheon of great manga comics too. good stuff.

oh, and thanks for the old blog post about Diving Bell and butterfly. I've got it at home but haven't watched it yet.

Re: Journalists as ski instructors. (Scripting News)

twitter-15119628 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:00:29 -0000

Another similarity is that both groups are generally good looking, blond, tanned and in great shape.

Re: Coolest software of the decade? (Scripting News)

twitter-30387824 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:27:48 -0000

Google. Its the best site ever built.

Re: Coolest software of the decade? (Scripting News)

Leibniz — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:12:16 -0000

Mobile Safari/WebKit

Re: The new Retweet is cool! (Scripting News)

facebook-1287799633 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:08:23 -0000

I don't think we have an argument as long as Dave agrees that Twitter should rename this LT = Like This :-)

What is going on here is that Twitter wants to save memory by making each RT the original tweet. That changes the definition of RT entirely to what an LT is everywhere else. Are we supposed to like a definition change? Why not use a new name for a new animal?

RTs are RTs until they apparently aren't anymore. If Twitter were to create a real RT button they would do what Tweetdeck, Twhirl and PowerTwitter and every other app immediately did ages ago, which is for the "RT Button" to repackage a tweet with an RT and OP username ready for editing. The reasons for edits are legion. Sure, some people want to add obnoxious "wow"'s or "check this out"'s (which reflects their personality), but even more people (like me) want to pare extraneous material out and actually delete the wow and check this out that the OP or someone in between had included himself/herself.

You can say "That's messing with the copyright!" when I admit to mercilessly deleting extraneous material, but the truth is its not my personality to have a tweet saying "Check this Out" associated to my name. If the edit doesn't kill what the OP was clearly trying to say, it is part of Twitter culture that this was OK and the OP is always happy for being RT'd by anyone with a reputation. If an edit is too comprehensive, one can replace RT with Via.

Many Twitterers can't spell, they capitalize in the wrong places, they're too wordy even for 140 characters and, worst of all, when they link to something fascinating, they might make a political comment or sarcastic remark that I just won't associate with my company. So, in the interest of controlling what I associate myself and my company with, I cherish the ability to reasonably edit a retweet (if I change the wording too much, I will call it a "Via") regardless of whether the OP's photo will appear next to it later or not. This applies 100x more if I added a comment in brackets that I disagree with the tweet (and no, adding a new tweet stating the disagreement doesn't offset the effect that I just publicized a boost for the original tweet's message - followers using apps only see tweets at random).

Also, you've heard of the "Delete the Head and Kill the Tail" aspect of this? I don't like the idea that my RT would disappear if the OP decides later on to delete their post. This feature makes it clear that the new "RT" doesn't belong to you as your content. It really is an LT.

Another big reason why this is important is that few people do anything in this world 100% altruistically. One RTs mainly to get credit for being hip and perceptive of what's being said around the net. Even more important: An RT often wins loyalty, friendship and a follow from the OP. Heck, that may be the main reason for RTing.

Let's look at an actual RT with the new system that I regretted slightly:

http://twitter.com/Akos_Fintor/status/5621081487

I got little credit for sending this (believe me, businesspeople on company time don't RT interesting stuff without wanting to be noticed) but I was still annoyed that I hadn't capitalized the T in Texas and deleted the unnecessary "Nice job people" after the link. It wasn't too big a deal but it could have been if that extraneous remark had been more political. The OP would have been fine with a normal RT where I had made those slight changes, he would have been glad for his name to be in my timeline of 2140 followers and I darned well would expect my company logo to be at the head of the RT or else I would not be retweeting on company time. Marketing departments don't pay employees to click "Like This" a lot.

By all means, let's have an LT function for those altruistic people not tweeting on company time, but I just wish the new "RT" feature hadn't destroyed the ability of my PowerTwitter Firefox plug-in to set up RTs the proper way: ready for a final edit that would guarantee quality control for my account's image and help get the retweet retweeted even more with credit going to me or my company for having helped promote the message.

Re: The new Retweet is cool! (Scripting News)

rogerben — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:54:51 -0000

"It is an exact replica of Like in FriendFeed.."

Precisely! At this point, all Twitter needs to recreate FF in 140 characters is give us a link next to each tweet that displays all the replies (and replies to replies) related to it.

"Perhaps a way to make everyone happy would have been to just call it Like."

The funny thing is, "retweet" is a far better label for this sort of functionality than "like" ever was... I'd rather RT something I disagree with than give it the implied endorsement of a "like".

Re: Coolest software of the decade? (Scripting News)

Luke — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:58:19 -0000

Google Search?