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

scriptingNews outline for 6/18/2000

Author:Dave Winer
Posted:6/18/2000; 6:49:21 AM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 6/18/2000
Msg #:17852
Prev/Next:17851 / 17853

I found everything I wanted 

DaveNet: Where do I send the money?

I just got an email saying that I could have dinner with George W. Bush tonight for $25K. I decided to pass. I'm saving my money for a dinner with musical artists.

Then I listened to Sisters, by Annie Lenox and Aretha Franklin. The last line of the song: "Thank you, I'll get it myself." That summarizes what I have to say to the music industry.

Subterranean Homesick Blues 

Today's Scripting News is sung to the tune of Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan.

It's available in Real Audio on Bob Dylan's site. I'd like to put the MP3 on my server. Debating. With myself.

Johnny's in the basement mixing up some medicine.

Pumps not working 

British Telecom: "We patented the principle of the hyperlink in the mid-70s when people were still wearing kipper ties and flares."

The pump don't work cause the vandals took the handles.

An undercurrent of guilt 

I was feeling guilty, a twinge of it, a little bit of blues, about listening to all this great music. Then I realized something. I had paid for all of it. I haven't downloaded anything that I didn't purchase at one time or another.

I'm listening to Bob Dylan now, a song I remember listening to in the basement of my parents' house when I was 15. Hey I love this shit. Did I buy the record? You bet I did.

I hate the record companies. What a bunch of jerks. Most of the music I have on CD I bought twice. Once on vinyl. Once on CD. Oh yeah, remember cassettes? I bought those too.

Don't follow leaders, watch your parking meters.

I must be thinking good thoughts 

I just got an email from the VP-Engineering at Napster. He invited me over. I'm going! (Tomorrow afternoon.)

Bungie FAQ 

Question: "Would you like to listen to a rambling tirade that condemns this decision and includes words like 'traitors,' 'sellouts,' 'whores' and a great deal of profanity?"

Answer: "No. Please keep it to yourself. If your mind is made up to hate this decision and by extension the people who made it, there is little we can do to make you feel better."

Bob Dylan FAQ 

Question: "You know many Swedes?"

Answer: "I know plenty, I happen to be a Swede myself."

Tech pointers 

David Brown compares Frontier to Vignette StoryServer.

Scott Hanson posted a specification of the protocol used by the Napster client. Juicy!

O'Reilly adds a feature to Meerkat called Mobs. I signed up, but I'm not sure what they're for. Can other people read my Mobs? Are they accessible through their API? Hmmm.

Synchronicity! As I was posting this link to Meerkat I got an email forwarded from an O'Reilly support person saying they did not plan to update their Frontier book. Ouch.

Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift.

Farewell old friend 

News.Com: Farallon sells for $14 million. One of the original Mac companies, they revolutionized networking with PhoneNet, which allowed you to network Macs over ordinary telephone wire.

Another site ranking 

According to webmostlinked.com, Scripting News is ranked 520 out of 617688 domains.

Woz on music 

Steve Wozniak: "I felt as you do upon reading Courtney's impassioned documentation of how the industry works."

You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows.

New York dinner 

Survey: My east coast trip spans the July 4 holiday weekend, a very long one. I want to do a Scripting News dinner in NY. Two choices, June 30 or July 5. Which would you prefer?

BTW, I'm thinking of doing one in Boston on July 6. If so, the June 30 date in NY works better for me.

Emailing with Alex 

My friend Alex Cohen, who I wrote about on Saturday, sent me an email thanking me for doing so. He's so cool. There are lots of people who don't like being written about, even in glowing terms. Alex is a Web guy, he has nothing to hide.

Apparently his Fanco vision has been bought into by his new employers, Pop.Com, a partnership of Dreamworks and Imagine, funded by Paul Allen. They bought countingdown.com, a phenomenal site built around a model quite similar to the one described by Courtney Love.

Alex read the Love speech and was excited. This is what I like about Alex, he gets excited over big ideas and doesn't look for reasons not to do them, as so many people in Silicon Valley do. I of course share the enthusiasm.

Yesterday I asked Alex if his backers are the good guys, or are they the people who are being routed around by Napster? They're the biggest names in Hollywood. Read their launch press release. Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, David Geffen, Paul Allen.

I think we're looking at the biggest hole yet in the Internet business. Yes, I'm glad we're involved in the business Web (see notes below) but this is big-time ConsumerLand.

SOAP tomorrow 

If everything goes as planned, tomorrow we will release the third implementation of SOAP 1.1, after IBM and Microsoft.

Frontier's SOAP should interoperate with IBM's, however we don't believe it will interoperate with Microsoft's, at least not in the first rev. (IBM shipped first, we used their implementation to guide ours.)

We also have support for s and s which are essential to our applications, and probably most others.

We will provide a SOAP 1.1 validator Web app, as we have for XML-RPC, and encourage others to test against this app.

The bulliest of pulpits 

NY Times: Critic sees flaws in Microsoft Strategy.

This piece reviews David Gelertner's vision of the future, where gravity brings data back to desktops, a trend that UserLand has bet heavy on. According to Gelertner, Microsoft has not, instead moving data to servers.

A great quote. "They have the bulliest pulpit in the world," Mr. Gelernter said of Microsoft, "but what have they done with it?"

Microsoft rebuts. Yes, the desktop is important, but it'll take a while before that unwinds. Microsoft makes products for the mass of users, now the leading edge is exploring new ways to use the power of desktops in conjunction with the network. Imho, that's as it should be.

Give Microsoft credit. Leading the way is unusual for them. Hey, it's unusual for any gorilla. I saw why as we did the SOAP project with them. Microsoft, inside, is a whole industry, a few standards bodies, lots of differing opinions, most of whom are sure that they're right. People who think Microsoft is brutal in their interface to the rest of the industry might be shocked to see how they deal with each other.

Out of all that came a spec that can be implemented, and the docs don't fill a bookshelf. It's not as simple as the spec that came out of our four-person collaboration on XML-RPC, and it's got some vagueness, that we're working out now, as we implement the spec. It'll all come out well. No lock-in, a competitive environment, I hope.

Will you be there? 

On Thursday I'll be at Microsoft covering the rollout of NGWS, which is getting a new name.

Survey: Will you be there?

A week from tomorrow I will at the Rising Tide Summit in Tarrytown, NY.

Survey: Will you be there?



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