The Desktop Fishbowl
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Friday, 6 September 2002

Dave Winer opines: I've been posting this question on various weblogs and in private emails. The question is this. Why not add language to the spec that says it's okay for an RSS feed to include elements not defined in the spec, and leave it at that. Please. God. No. Pretty much every element of RSS0.94 is optional, and can be left out. If you also allow arbitrary elements to be added, do you have a specification any more? In the RSS 0.9x series, a valid version 0.9x document is also a valid 0.9x+1 document. If you allow arbitrary elements you break this contract, or at least make it impossible to add new elements to the specification. Each added element becomes a redefining of a previously permitted but undefined element. It would discourage the adoption of RSS modules (for which there are already a good set of defined standards, and which can be mixed and matched) in favour of a hundred splintered dialects of the core RSS, which may be mutually incompatible. Oh, and ten points for someone who can tell me where this post's title (Babble out in simile, since the titles are only visible in my RSS feed) comes from, without using Google. 1:33:47 PM

For a while, my mother had a job that involved helping writers. If you were a writer, she'd be able to tell you how to get in touch with publishers, how to get your manuscript assessed, what writing events were going on around the state, and so on. Regularly, she'd receive a phone-call that went something like this: “I've got this really good idea for a book. Do you know someone who could write it for me?” If you want to see the same theory at work in programming, have a look at this gem on Sourceforge (all spelling and grammar atrocities are transcribed verbatim from the original): An online life simulation game. You play againts many users for a life simulation game. Its like an online version of The Sims accepot better and multiplayer. It will be targeted to run on linux, using mysql as the database apache as the web server php Looking down below the Development Status: 1 - Planning, but just above the section that shows the project has released no files, and has nothing in CVS, is a link: HELP WANTED: This project is looking for Developer(s). Follow that link, and you get the plaintive request... start programming first step. We need the game planned up. Please give us ideas. It would improve the site no end if sourceforge refused to make a project visible to other users until it posted some working code. Just one minor feature or prototype would do, just enough to show that the thing isn't just some flight of fantasy. 1:09:17 PM