Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

scriptingNews outline for 5/15/2000

Author:Dave Winer
Posted:5/15/2000; 12:51:41 AM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 5/15/2000
Msg #:17306
Prev/Next:17305 / 17307

Pictures from WWW9

I had a long talk today with Mark Baker of Sun Microsystems, a frequent participant in discussions on the SOAP, xml-rpc and xml-dist-app mail lists. There is cause to be hopeful that Sun will get behind one or both of the messaging protocols.

Lunch today with Rohit Khare, Edd Dumbill and Ole Roel. Ole is an engineer at Adobe, and demo'd a WebDAV-aware version of GoLive. Edd, as I'm sure you know, is the editor of XML.COM, and xmlhack, and author of the PHP version of xml-rpc. Rohit is more complex. A fascinating character. He was at the W3C in the mid-90s, went to UC-Irvine, and is now doing a very ambitious Web startup. I expect he'll show up in future Scripting Newses.

Janet Daly who does much of the coordination for W3C is pictured talking with one of the SVG developers.

Searching for the heart of the Web

I came to WWW9 partially to find the heart of the Web, not the heartless thing the Web has become in San Francisco. Does it actually have one? Well if it does, this is one place it might be. I've been asking people that question. I hope to come away from this week with a clear statement of what the www is, and more specifically, what the W3C is. Rohit laughed when I said this. But I figure if I really concentrate and ask enough people, and ask questions, I should be able to come up with something after a week? What do you think?

Half a world away

Oliver Breidenbach of Germany is visiting San Francisco and attending Apple's WWDC: Day 1, Day 2.

News from Pyra

Well, half of the suspense has been relieved. Via evhead comes news that Derek Powazek has joined the Blogger team as creative director. He does beautifully designed sites, and has the courage to try out new ideas. Congratulations to Pyra on their continued growth.

BTW, I really appreciate the "Pyra Builds Cool Shit" headline. It's true, and it reflects their values, and there's nothing wrong with liking yourself. Keep on diggin Pyra, it's entertaining. Microserfs meets the Web. Totally 1.0.

Smart cars

I don't know the story behind this car, but I've seen a few of them in Amsterdam and they're weird.

Jim Lynch: "It started off as a joint venture between Mercedes Benz and Swatch, based on the A-Class Mercedes that you're probably also seeing around town. The project ran into some initial trouble upon discovery of some safety problems with the A-Class, but those problems (rollover, I think) were resolved. I think that Sally Jessy Raphael or one of the daytime talkshow hosts has imported one into the States, but I don't expect to see one driving around the Valley anytime soon."

Nick Sweeney: "What surprises me about Smart Cars is that you don't see them thrown or pushed into canals more often by weekend tour parties who've had too much Heineken."

Web RPCs considered harmful, further thoughts

More discussion of Ken MacLeod's caveat at WWW9 and on the SOAP mail list. I had second thoughts similar to Ken's after posting my initial response, and then I thought some more and realized that these concerns are better applied to software that's in broad distribution today.

An example, I installed Red Hat a few months back and put a pointer on Scripting News. Back came emails from readers telling me to turn this and that off, I was pretty horrified to find out how exposed my system was and all I did was click the Install button.

How many Red Hat servers are running right now.

The dark side of the Web reaches the desktop

Business Week: "These changes represent an important philosophical shift by Microsoft. 'From this point forward," says Sinofsky, "security is the top design point for Office, even if it means less flexibility.'"

Webbies

There's something unweblike about what the Webby awards have become. They celebrate individual accomplishment, and that's cool with me, but the focus is not on how the Web allows people to share, which is imho, the only interesting and unique thing about the Web. It's OK that we have an Oscar-equivalent in the Web world, but I also want to see Pulitzer-equivalent, perhaps even a Nobel-equivalent. Let's put focus on quality and humanity, not just stardom. We've got plenty of that in TV, movies and magazines. Of course we have it on the Web too, but that's not all we have.

Morning notes

Good morning Amsterdam! Rise and shine. It's the middle of the night in the US. What a trip. I'm going to look for a good old US breakfast, and then do the tutorials at WWW9. Great dinner last night with Edd, had a lovely seat overlooking one of the canals. And synchronicity kicks in again. I got an email from Bernie DeKoven saying that he's coming to Amsterdam, arriving tomorrow (which is yesterday back in the US or something like that).

Tomorrow Andrea comes to Amsterdam with a full itinerary. Bernie, Andrea, Andre, the whole world seems to be coming to Amsterdam. And all anyone wants to know is what will Blogger announce this week! ";->"

An anonymous post to the xml-dev list that is causing some consternation.

Tim Berners-Lee starts the XML-URI list.

Susan Kitchens: "They speak English here!"



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