24 June 2005 Archives

The big news at Gnomedex I gather was that Microsoft was incorporating support for RSS in it’s new generation of IE, IE 7.x, as well as other components of the upcoming Longhorn operating system.

In all the excitement, I’ve noticed that not many people have talked about whether IE 7.x will also detect Atom or RSS 1.0. Since several prominent weblogging tools don’t provide support for RSS 2.0, this does limit the effectiveness of the browser integration.

Considering that Firefox has syndication feed support, for RSS 2.0, Atom, and RSS 1.0, I’m not sure why the fact that Microsoft is playing catchup has everyone in a tizzy; I’m sure the reasons will become apparent…eventually.

However, I definitely don’t understand why folks are excited about Microsoft releasing its RSS extensions (lists, where have we heard this before) under a Creative Commons license. Even the CC people seem pleasantly surprised. After all, RSS 2.0 is licensed as Attribution ShareAlike, which says:

If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.

True, if Microsoft received permission from the Berkman Center at Harvard, the company could release the extended RSS 2.0 without the CC license. I imagine, though, that Microsoft is indifferent to whether the extensions are used by others or not. None of this is exactly earth shattering use of technology.

As for Microsoft’s integration of RSS into it’s products, we’ll see how much of an impact this will be by the time December 2006 rolls around. A lot can happen between then and now.

The Channel 9 video about Microsoft’s use of RSS in IE 7.x says the company will also support Atom and RSS 1.0.

From the video, it would seem that Microsoft is looking at RSS and its extensions as the company’s entry into microformatting and tagging, as well as syndication. A sort of RDF Lite, Technorati Tag Heavy.

I can see a conflict already with RSS 2.0 and Microsoft’s use of RSS in regards enclosures. Dave Winer has said, there is one and only one enclosure only per item. Microsoft’s use implies multiple enclosures. I am assuming that the company is working around this issue with namespaces. Hard to say.

SOAP comes to mind — friends is all relative.

update

Someone commented at the IE Blog post on this announcement that the spec for Microsoft modifications is free-as-in-speech… Considering recent events, this may not have been the most helpful comment to make in support of Microsoft.

Normally I encourage people to visit St. Louis and Missouri, but I wouldn’t recommend this area to anyone for any reason for the next two months. The heat index hit over 100 today and should hit 105 tomorrow, and it’s still only June. Add this to a growing and worrisome drought and extremely poor air quality, and you have the fixings for an unpleasant time.

We’ve been turning up the temperature on our air conditioner to equalize between the inside and outside a little better. Now when you go outside, you stagger from the heat. Well, I stagger from the heat.

I need to put some shallow pans of water out for our growing group of squirrels, rabbits, and birds. Even the cockroaches, which I discovered when I was out taking moon shots. There were these largish long dark spots moving around on the sidewalk in front of the house, and when I got close, they scattered madly, most going into the cracks in the sidewalks. When they’re not in the house, they’re kind of cute.

I’ve been down and out the last few days with severe headaches and feeling a bit peaky, but plan on getting out tomorrow and Sunday. The St. Louis gay pride event, Pridefest, is this weekend and I’d like to attend to provide support, as well as get some photos.

Ah well, into each life a little ozone devouring polluted heat filled sunshine must fall.

update

As Charles noted, a major explosion and fire downtown hasn’t helped. Those poor firefighters.