24 Sep 2002

Tue, 24 Sep 2002

Dave Winer's RSS breaks Amphetadesk

I have been subscribed to scripting news for a while when I came across this tonight in amphetadesk:

There was an error parsing this channel. The parser reported: not well-formed (invalid token) at line 81, column 166, byte 6860 . You may wish to contact the owner of this channel informing them of this XML parsing error, but AmphetaDesk will keep trying to get new updates for you.

It seems dave has seen fit to just convert http://scripting.com/rss.xml to RSS 2.0. Think about it. This is tantamount to converting your website to spit out HTML 4.0 when user agents are still at 2.0. Couldn't he just have spun another file called rss2.xml ensuring continued success for readers of rss.xml? I don't get it.

operator: this is amphetadesk how may I help you?
me: please delete dave winer's horked up RSS.
operator: consider it done.

Update: Dave comments that he has discovered and fixed the problem in the feed and it was not related to RSS 2.0. If you're in the mood for a classic Winer flame war, follow the comments link.

Update: Mark Pilgrim picks up the story of how people are abandoning RSS. I think that's a bit extreme; however, I am in the camp that believes staying at 0.91 is probably the most prudent thing to do at this point. But I can understand the backlash given Dave's ambassadorship.

Posted at: 22:42 | permalink

VWVortex Drives The Volkswagen Golf R32

The folks at VWVortex went to Germany and drove the new VW Golf R32 at Volkswagen's proving ground. 240 HP, 6 speed manual, all-wheel drive - in a, gulp, GOLF! Holy macarel.

Posted at: 09:20 | permalink

The Future Ubiquity of GPS

In another neat post, the shifted librarian reports that Motorola has a chip to put GPS capabilities in small devices such as cell phones and notebooks. It's only a matter of time before that earthmate on my dash goes the way of the dinosaur. Kinda like how the 802.11b card in my PC is gonna go the way of the dinosaur. Speaking of 802.11b, jenny also reports that libraries are going wireless. Cool!

Posted at: 08:36 | permalink

Shifted Librarian: Controlling Hooligans With Music

I never had quite the vision to foresee this when I was in music school in the mid 80's. In what I would call a special form of music therapy, the shifted librarian reports that Boston transit cops are using such disturbing sounds as Gershwin and Sousa to drive troublesome teens away from the subway stops. Excellent.

Posted at: 08:25 | permalink

Dell Linux Cluster Speeds Bioinformatics Research

A Dell Linux Cluster at the Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics has the following characteristics:

Gasp!

Posted at: 00:18 | permalink