Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
scriptingNews outline for 4/30/2001
Author: Dave Winer Posted: 4/30/2001; 5:17:26 AM Topic: scriptingNews outline for 4/30/2001 Msg #: 22166 Prev/Next: 22165 / 22167
DaveNet: Strategy Tax.
Fortune: "But now that the Internet boom has flamed out and now that the economy has stalled, it may be that a tidy sandbox is not enough; it may be time, in fact, for Jobs to start sculpting a new sandcastle."
NY Times: "It's a terrible thing to say that if I lose 80 percent of my customers it's a good thing," he said, "but they weren't customers really, they were visitors."
SJ Merc: "Exodus must now fight perceptions that it will collapse all together."
Press release: Microsoft Acquires a CMS. "NCompass Resolution 4.0 is a Web content management system that enables businesses to quickly and cost-effectively deploy highly dynamic and personalized e-business Web sites."
Upside: Microsoft spends $36M on Web software company.
Lawrence Lessig: Let the Stories Go.
Survey: Based on what you know right now, if you were the Benevolent Dictator of the Universe, which would you choose as the standard for RPC across the Internet?
Ken Dow's online introduction to Manila course starts next Monday.
This is the kind of rivalry among BigCo's that I support.
Register: "Leave it to Microsoft to sell submissiveness as a virtue."
Wired: "When the recently sealed New York Times Capsule opens in the year 3000, curious new millennium dwellers may wonder what living in the late 20th century sounded like."
Susan Kitchens, who has been writing about her 100-year-old grandfather's hip replacement surgery, has something to say this morning that was unexpected. Only click if you're ready for a surprise.
Gary Krakow: Mac OS X Supports Flames!
Lance Knobel: "I've become an unwitting observer of a Darwinian struggle that I suspect is being repeated in many places."
Marek: "If your company is a steamship then go for the iceberg."
Don't forget tomorrow is Tuesday. Take a programmer to lunch. Take two programmers for twice the fun. Act now, you never know, you might not get another chance.
Apple on board
I note, with pleasure, that SOAP and XML-RPC are on the agenda at Apple's WWDC starting May 21 in San Jose.
I hope the Mac developer community embraces these protocols, they're very good for the Mac, imho, because they allow lots of choice, no one knows what OS is at the other end of the pipe.
This is how the Windows monopoly can ease, by making it safe and easy to not use Windows.
Can't touch that
Some people still think deployed formats and protocols can change. This is a major disconnect. People on mail lists think that "everyone" is here, and that they all can change their implementations just because some people think they know how to do it better.
However, in the real world, once code is deployed to customers, if you change the formats, you break the users. So there comes a point beyond which you cannot change the format, if you care about the users. If you're in business, you have to care about the users. Almost every mistake we make is when we decide our point of view is more important.
This happened last summer when some RDF people tried to take over "RSS". I was left saying but but what about the users? Well the revolution didn't happen, predictably, and imho the revolutionaries did more to break RSS than Netscape did when they turned off their servers last week. We're still picking up the pieces from both breakage events.
9/2/00: "In the overworked world of Web development, there's no time to study, there's only time to do."
SOAP 1.1 deployment
A breakage-related discussion is going on on the soapbuilders list. Some people think we should change the way we use the SOAPAction header. (Or do they? The messages are confusing.) Others think we should change schemas. Oy the breakage that would fall out from that. No way.
Meanwhile, as the arguments develop, Microsoft is deploying, which means very soon we must lock down our SOAP stack and say "This Is It," this is what we will support for perpetuity, so UserLand customers, please start deploying, and of course that will be good, even when new people come along and say we're doing it wrong, which according to Murphy's Law, which applies to protocol specs, they surely will. In my humble opinion, the time for that is passing quickly. We published a spec to explain our practice, and we think it's a solid basis for our software interoperating with others.
BTW, we're trying to avoid the situation where SOAP interop means "Works With Microsoft," which as I've said before would be a failure for SOAP.
RDF query
What is it about the culture of RDF that says "All your spec belong to us." I saw a presentation at the W3C Web Services Workshop where a nice man from Colorado explained how SOAP could be RDF-ized. While he was speaking I was wondering why they don't create their own revolution, then we can support them. Instead they try to impose their point of view on us, they must wonder why everyone runs away when they show up.
Dinner with Docs
I had a lovely dinner last night with Doc Searls at Siam Garden in Menlo Park. I've been going there for ages, and Lee, the host, always greets me as "Doctor Winer" and I call her "Doctor Lee." (BTW, they have the best Thai food on the peninsula.)
I always introduce my guest to Lee, she has a fantastic memory, so I said, and this is my friend.. (Gulp. His name is Doc!) ..Doctor Searls. I had to explain that he's not really a doctor, and then Lee said she isn't either, and I admitted the same was true for me. We all had a good laugh and went on with our dinner.
Dotcom lunacy?
This morning I got a reminder to vote in the Webby Awards, not like any sites I care about ever get nominated. I'm tempted to say that this is a remnant of the dotcom lunacy. OK this one time I'm going to succumb to temptation.
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