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Microsoft To Extend RSS
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jun 24, 2005 01:42 PM
from the yay-another-microsoft-standard dept.
from the yay-another-microsoft-standard dept.
Joshua53077 writes "Microsoft announced today a plan to 'extend the RSS standard to better support the publishing of ordered lists of information...' This feature will be included in Longhorn. It appears as though they will be including RSS support in Internet Explorer, which will come over a year and a half after the same technology was introduced in Apple's Safari RSS." From the article: "Gary Schare, director of strategic product management in the Windows division of Microsoft, says that while RSS is a reliable standard for updating information in message form, it currently has no logical way to organize that information in a way that could help subscribers keep track of what is being fed to them."
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Bye, bye RSS .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bye, bye RSS .... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.reallysimplesyndication.com/2005/06/22
From the article: "The story begins in March of this year. I got a call from Robert Scoble saying there was a group on the MSIE team that wants to extend RSS to handle lists. I was immediately supportive of this, I told Scoble that some people think I'm conservative about extending RSS, but I'm actually liberal. The only thing I don't like is when people invent new ways of expressing data that RSS already defines. He assured me this isn't what was going on."
Re:Bye, bye RSS .... (Score:4, Insightful)
And if you read [microsoft.com] how Microsoft is handling their extentions, frankly I don't see what the issue is. So someone thought of a way to make RSS potentially better, and they're sharing it with other people.
As I see it MS had two options:
1) Create their own proprietary standard and have everyone bitch at them or;
2) Use an existing standard, try and OPENLY build on it to do what they want, and only have retards like Slashdot minions bitch about it.
Sure it's flamebait but I'm sick of this crap. Also wilsone8, I'm not directing this to you, just all the others that don't care to educate themselves first.
Re:Bye, bye RSS .... (Score:4, Insightful)
A promise to not patent whatever it is they're doing would be an excellent start.
How? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.melanieandchris.com/)
Re:How? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/~Spy+der+Mann/journal/ | Last Journal: Thursday November 15, @12:57AM)
Whee, RSS Viruses!
RSS Viruses (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.lullabud.com/)
Re:How? (Score:5, Insightful)
That won't break the use of RSS with existing software. RSS is a dialect of XML. XML is designed to be extended without breaking existing uses. This is why XML can be so useful as a data format - software that uses an XML dialect will still work after the dialect is extended.
I'm not defending Microsoft here, but worries about incompatibilities are almost certainly unfounded because of the way XML works.
Re:How? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://reverend.healeys.net/)
plenty of time (Score:5, Funny)
(http://j.bruce.home.mindspring.com)
Don't panic. This gives the OSS community a couple of years to respond. Besides, this feature probably won't make it into the final release of Longhorn anyway.
I'm sure they won't jack up the spec (Score:4, Funny)
(http://127.0.0.1:98/)
As it should be. (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is exactly the way it SHOULD be done. Keep the management of the data seperate from the transmission of the data. Leave content management up to the APPLICATION.
Text should be enough for everybody... (Score:5, Informative)
"5 Things You Didn't Know You Could Track with RSS
Package deliveries
New to RSS? Get a free account with Web-based RSS reader Bloglines (bloglines.com). In addition to tracking headlines from your favorite sites, you can now receive an RSS feed on packages from UPS, FedEx or the USPS-just enter the tracking number, and the feed will update at each stage of the delivery.
Library books
Avoid late fees and fruitless trips to the library with ELF (libraryelf.com), which generates a feed to inform you when books you've requested are available at your local branch (including a link to operating hours) and when your checked-out books are almost due.
Local weather
RSSWeather (rssweather.com) sends updates on current and forecasted weather conditions for your city. You can even customize the feed to notify you only when certain changes occur (temperature, forecast, etc.).
TV listings
Need to know when you can next catch Deadwood on HBO? Bootleg RSS (ktyp.com/rss/tv) provides channel-specific feeds (by time zone) with the day's programming for dozens of cable networks, including CNN, the Discovery Channel and ESPN.
Yourself
Find out when your company, favorite sports team or even your name is mentioned just about anywhere on the Web with PubSub (pubsub.com). The site trawls more than nine million news and blog sites and lets you create an RSS feed that alerts you when your specified keywords appear.
Re:As it should be. (Score:5, Informative)
There already IS a dating sytem in RSS, see the optional channel elements "pubDate" and "lastBuildDate" in the RSS 2.0 Spec at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss [harvard.edu]
Oh god. This was rated 5?
Now that's not very nice at all, at least I did my homework
Other RSS uses (Score:4, Funny)
(Last Journal: Thursday March 13 2003, @04:44PM)
By keeping track of what's being fed (Score:4, Interesting)
What will they really do? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What will they really do? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.brendansstudentloans.com/)
You are right though, the Creative Commons is not a software license, it is a license for documents, including specifications. The original RSS specs were published under the CC, and in keeping in line with that because of their talks with the original developers of RSS.
Microsoft "Breaks" RSS (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.fundraw.com/ | Last Journal: Friday October 26, @03:42AM)
- Greg
Re:Microsoft "Breaks" RSS (Score:5, Insightful)
The extensions themselves can be standardized.
Microsoft is not breaking the standard.
Just like Krb5 (Score:4, Insightful)
AFAIR, anyway. Does SambaNG or whatever truly smell like an AD with the MS-KRB5 authorization field properly filled-in?
Innovation (Score:5, Funny)
(http://nugnug.com/)
Microsoft kicks ass!
I can't wait (Score:3, Funny)
(http://www.sdonag.plus.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday June 07 2006, @04:05AM)
Seen this before (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Point out a fault in it. Promise to *fix* it by changing the standard so the improved version is only compatible with your software.
3. Get people to believe the technology isn't ready until you have a chance to support it.
4. Sell it as a new idea and profit.
Look, I made an ordered list without extending
Sorting the data? (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.pyroenvydesign.com/)
Surely sorting the data is the job of the client program, RSS is just a way of delivering the information. I'd assume the Participatory Culture Foundation [participatoryculture.org] is going to have some way of sorting through the shows you subscribe to. Ways which currently exist include indexing the RSS message "Spotlight" or Longhorn search style or just using the existing HTML Meta Tag systems. (The former being IMO much more flexible and informative than anything Microsoft could come up with in code.)
Re:Safari's RSS? How about Firefox's (Score:4, Informative)
Opera's RSS... (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday September 27 2005, @03:25AM)
Discussion and Demos from the team on Channel9 (Score:4, Informative)
Amazingly good discussion and demos!
Embrace, Extend, Patent (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://albanach.com/)
Their Office 2k3 XML format's 'may' have patents [microsoft.com] prohibiting their use in open source applications. Who's to bet the new RSS 'standard' will similarly be patented.
Maybe if they froze Longhorn's feature set (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/)
How many features were promised then dropped in Win2003 and Longhorn to get them released? Why the hell do they keep adding features?
At this rate we'll get Longhorn Lite in 2006, Longhorn Complete in 2007, and Longhorn As It Was Really Promised Ten Years Ago in 2012.
MS just needs to get over themselves and get a product out the door with the *current* set of features they promised.
Re:Maybe if they froze Longhorn's feature set (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.plkr.org/)
Have you ever considered that this might just be a marketing ruse by Microsoft to get their competitors (Apple, the OSS community, etc.) to slow down on focusing their efforts, because "..well, we have a couple of years before Longhorn is released, whats the rush?"
Seriously, what if they released Longhorn in December of this year, with all of the features they've previously claimed were pulled from it? (WinFS, podcasting, IE7, etc.)
This is a very VERY common marketing move, and I'm surprised nobody has seen through it yet. You publically announce that your product is being delayed, so your competitors relax a bit, then you announce some key feature of your product was dropped, etc. and your competition smirks and goes out and celebrates... and then you release the full product, WITH the "dropped" features on Monday.
Your competition crumbles and cries in the corner.
Good News! (Score:3, Insightful)
(about:mozilla)
Larry Lesig has more [lessig.org] at his blog [lessig.org].
I can't vouch for Microsoft's reasons for doing this, other than speculate that they are trying to respond to the old criticism that "embrace and extend" really means "steal and lock away". If Microsoft really is trying to be more open in it's communiction protocols, I can't help but see that as a good thing. They are free to extend all they want as long as they do not use their dominant market position to force those extensions on their customers to unfairly place burdens on their competitors.
Too Late? (Score:3, Interesting)
A summary of Slashdot comments: (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.sporktania.com/)
Group 2: RSS is XML and therefore works using magic! It's not like there were eight thousand different conflicting RSS standards before!
A Vanishingly Small Number Of Voices Of Fucking Reason: You know, they released the spec for extensions under a ShareAlike Creative Commons license [lessig.org]. They might as well have done it under the god-damned GPL. This is PROGRESS, you imbeciles.
Re:Here we go again... (Score:3, Funny)
SSSSLOLSUCKTOWN (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.lullabud.com/)
Re:Microsoft is The Follower (Score:3, Insightful)
How long can this be maintained?
As long as we let them.
Re:Microsoft is The Follower (Score:3, Informative)
(http://danbirchall.multiply.com/)
Re:Microsoft is The Follower/No unusual (Score:3, Informative)
In the oil and gas industry the large multi-nationals often sit back and let the 'wild catters' take the exploration risk, only buying those that have a good record of finds. Chrysler bought Jeep which was a strong brand and filled a hole in their portfolio. GM was built from zero on nothing but smaller companies (e.g. Pontiac, Buick, Chevrolet) after it became apparent cars were a thing of the future and the companies purchased had staying power.
This is how risk averse accountants operate. It is a very old business pattern.
12 step program. (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.lullabud.com/)
2) Extend
3) Delay release until after Longhorn.
4) PROFIT!!
5) Patch Critical Security Flaws.
6) Patch Critical Security Flaws.
7) Patch Critical Security Flaws.
8) Patch Critical Security Flaws.
9) Patch Critical Security Flaws.
10) Patch Critical Security Flaws.
11) Patch Critical Security Flaws.
12) Patch Critical Security Flaws.