rcade

Child elements of character data can be moved around too.

XML elements can contain both text and child elements. Character data didn't have to be stored in an attribute to allow outline nesting.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<node>

    <node> 

      <![CDATA[ Hello I am text ]]>

      <node> ... </node>

      <node> ... </node>

    </node>

</node>

If someone wanted to extend OPML into another domain, even if they got others to agree on their proposed type value and the new attributes added to support that type, there's nothing to stop a collision with somebody else choosing the same attribute names.

There also is nothing to stop the author of the OPML specification from opposing the new type.

It would be far easier to create a new XML format.

I love love love XML, but when I encounter an effort to use it to carry presentation like HTML alongside executable code -- such as Apache Jelly -- I regret the choices that brought me to that place in my life.

I wouldn't call OPML a good example of XML for reasons I detail elsewhere in the thread. But if you need a subscription list of feeds for import or export it's alright.

I wouldn't call it underrated.

OPML is useful because people use it, but it was a bad design decision to store long blocks of HTML inside XML attributes instead of XML elements. Look at the escaped HTML inside these "text" attributes:

http://scripting.com/index.opml

Because the HTML is stored in attributes, it can't be wrapped in a CDATA block. There's also no limit to how long the text can be.

OPML is also a moving target without a standard. Any time there's a desire to represent something new with the format, attributes are added without any public participation from existing implementers. The value of the "type" attribute on outline elements determines whether new arbitrary attributes can be present.

Because of this unorthodox extension process, the OPML format has become a catch-all for unrelated uses: outlines, blog posts, RSS/Atom subscription lists, programming source code, and more.

All of the uses could've been represented as XML formats. XML didn't need OPML for storing and transmitted arbitrary data. We already had XML for that.

The original thing OPML was created to do -- represent outlines -- is severely hampered by the fact there's no way to store the expansion state of collapsed nodes of an outline.

Atom is a great feed format with a rock-solid spec.

I wouldn't call it a weird mashup for WordPress to use atom:link in their RSS feeds. It does things no RSS element can do, such as allow a feed to identify its own URL.

For those who don't know, every WordPress site with an RSS feed also has an Atom feed available by adding "/atom" to the end of the RSS feed URL, such as this:

RSS feed: https://wordpress.com/blog/feed/

Atom feed: https://wordpress.com/blog/feed/atom/

I think the inspiration was that an atom is a foundational building block of matter and a lot of things could be built with a well-specified universal feed format and publishing format.

The time spent debating names, disqualifying names, requalifying names and voting on names was like the battle of the newscasters on Anchorman. Pure carnage.

I wouldn't say that an Atom feed is an implementation of the "RSS concept." That muddies the water too much. Because RSS and Atom are distinct feed formats, calling an Atom feed "RSS" would confuse a lot of people.

Instead I'd say that Atom feeds and RSS feeds are each an implementation of the syndication concept.

Because of his new request for an attribution change, the credit line now reads, "This document is authored by the RSS Advisory Board and is offered under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike license, based on an original document published by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society authored by Dave Winer, founder of UserLand Software."

https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification

This also includes a change to reflect that the Berkman Center for Internet & Society became the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society in 2016.

The credit line on the specification has been unchanged since Aug. 12, 2006: "This document is authored by the RSS Advisory Board and is offered under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike license, based on an original document published by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society."

We've never been asked to change that, by Dave Winer or anyone else.

As part of the RSS Advisory Board, I enjoyed the history lesson.

The W3C should keep publishing the RSS 2.0 specification along with the RSS 1.0 and Atom specifications in the documentation for its Feed Validation Service.

It can also republish the RSS Best Practices Profile that was created by the RSS Advisory Board, because it was released under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike 2.0 license.

https://www.rssboard.org/rss-profile

I'm Rogers Cadenhead, the chairman of the RSS Advisory Board.

What W3C is doing is correct. It is republishing our copy of the RSS specification under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike license and using our preferred authorship credit: RSS Advisory Board with a link to https://www.rssboard.org/.

The RSS Advisory Board has published the RSS 2.0 specification for 20 years. Over that time we have revised it 10 times, mostly in minor ways such as to fix a broken link.

The board began publishing the spec under a Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike license when Dave Winer was still a member. It is redistributable under the terms of that license forever.

Winer wrote this on his blog in 2003:

"On July 15, UserLand Software transferred ownership of its RSS 2.0 specification to the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

"Berkman then placed a Creative Commons license on the spec, allowing it to be customized, excerpted and republished. ...

"The spec can circulate freely thanks to the Creative Commons."

http://scripting.com/davenet/2003/07/28/harvardHostsKeyWeblo...

Most instances follow the Mastodon Covenant, whose promises include giving users three months warning before a shutdown.

https://joinmastodon.org/covenant

Mastodon looks workable to me.

Choosing a Mastodon instance is like signing up for an email provider. Email is decentralized and seems to be doing alright.

I picked an instance that was good-sized at 9,000 users with a focus I liked: indieweb.social. That gives me a Local feed of interesting indieweb-related content in addition to my Home feed of people I follow. I didn't have to trust my privacy to an anonymous activist. I know who is running the instance and support it via Patreon.

Three other witnesses have come forward and said that they were concerned the woman was too drunk to consent. Artur Bergman's account: "Me and my friend realized we had seen Scoble appear next to her repeatedly during the evening. Pouring more and more alcohol for her. After seeing this for a while we felt we had to intervene and help her get away."

https://twitter.com/crucially/status/921317876169977857

I don't know where you're getting the idea it's not a conference. Here's a link to a photo set from Foo Camp 2010, where the incident occurred:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/deanputney/sets/72157624362235...

Burning Man it ain't.

True enough. I'm glad the world's 1.1 billion Catholics didn't hold a grudge.

"Many, many people" is an understatement.

Regarding your blog entry, I don't think it's instructive to compare the way adults respond to an extremely blunt spoken person to your child being bullied. Stallman's an adult who doesn't pull punches -- he described Steve Jobs as "evil" right after his death. Is it bullying for him to get counterpunched, or just robust dialogue? I vote door number two.

As for your kid being bullied, you need to be all over that issue as a parent. No kid should have to endure it as the price for attending school.

I thought that recess part was weird too. Bronx Science had recess? There were seven future Nobel Prize-winning physicists pondering the universe on those teeter totters.

Richard Stallman is one of my heroes in tech. He's a deeply fascinating and amazingly obstinate thinker who should be Walter Isaacson's next book project.

But does he really need anyone's help fending off bullies? A guy who described Steve Jobs as being guilty of "evil" after his death would eat bullies for breakfast. If he ate breakfast. Which he doesn't. And don't ask him why.

That wasn't Swartz. The late[1] Mark Pilgrim wrote the Winer Watcher software.

1: Late as in dead from the Internet since 10/4/2011, not dead as in life.

That would be a neat trick, since RSS was created at Netscape a full year before Winer got involved.

http://www.rssboard.org/rss-history

Over time, the number of Internet technologies Dave Winer didn't invent approaches zero.

Dave Winer's feeling butthurt about the bad press he got in 2004 over abruptly taking 3,000 blogs offline at his free hosting site Weblogs.Com without giving those users any notice:

http://lawmeme.research.yale.edu/modules.php?name=News&f...

A year later he sold Weblogs.Com without all those freeloaders to VeriSign for $2.3 million, so you'd think he'd feel pretty good regardless.

But nobody nurses a grudge like him. Except maybe me.

People who say "failure is not an option" are hopeless pollyannas. Success does not happen because you refused to accept failure as a possible outcome. Success is a product of hard work, talent, timing and luck in varying measures.

I've failed in 9 out of 10 projects I began on the web since 1995. I have been fortunate that the 1-in-10 successes have enabled me to continue trying new ventures. If I refused to acknowledge failure, would 10 out of 10 projects I launched be a success? It would be foolish to think so.