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XML-RPC and the Need to Cash In
I'm about to be sacrilegious, I suppose. Other people may call it inept.
I've also got to preface this with a few notes (in Dave Winer style):
- "I love XML-RPC." Yes!
- "I like and use Blogger." Right on!
- "I like and use Jabber." Good morning, innovators!
- "The recent developments of the Blogger API, the Manilla and Jabber
BloggerAPI additions and so forth are wonderful. I love those
as well." What a community!
- "AmphetaDesk has always been targeted to the stupid idiotic user.
My mom, my dog, my mistress. The stupid people of the world. You
know, the ones who send you those emails. Oh yes, THOSE emails.
AmphetaDesk is an RSS reader here: disobey.com/amphetadesk/"
Share the love!
One of my problem is this (and I know this is an age-old complaint that has
not aged well): All of these technologies are for geeks. Geeks, geeks,
geeks. Repeat ad infinitum. Sharpie "I AM NOT A REAL PERSON" on the top
frame of your computer monitor. It's important. Mayer-Briggs says we think
we're smarter than everyone else, and goddamit, we're proving the damn
pigeon-hole test right.
Where are the end users? How can my dog get in on this crap?
Now, sure, XML-RPC is not for end users - my dog could gleefully lick his
dogbowl, ignoring the fact that I'm SOAPing the amount of water in his bowl
so that I can be Jabber'd when he needs more.
And Blogger has done a wonderful job of getting the end user into the realm
of nice and easy weblog updating. Hell, I even wrote a "meant to annoy
people for the sheer enjoyment" article on it [1]. (And yes, that was an
admission on the state of this email).
And Jabber, well, sure, Jabber is a nice thing, but I can't find a single
client on Windows that is worth using continually (WinJab just kinda
stopped working for me). And I'm surprised that there haven't been a wild
influx of Jabber servers appearing. If O'Reilly thinks this is the greatest
thing in the world, why aren't they running a public server? How come the
only servers that JabberView.com are from people I've never heard of (and
thus, can't trust with my data - "all your data bel... <bang!>"). All the
geeks are using this nice tool, but not the core of the population: the
moronic end users. [2]
Now... now, we have all these nice integration techniques. Now, I can
chumpbot posts onto the #rdfig archive page. I can Jabber the cybersex
transcript immediately over to the erotic fiction section of ClubLove.com
(no, I don't know if they had one - there was an article on the
ClubLove.com owner in the latest PC Magazine). And I can Manilla my
interface to Blogger as well. I bet within a few weeks, we'll have a means
of blogging a note through Manilla whilst simultaneously cc'ing it to three
people on various IMs through Jabber.
What does all this junk replace? If we take the core value: updating a
website, then we're replacing FTP. If we take dummy FTP, its like copying a
file on your computer to another location on your computer.
I work for an ISP as a system administrator. We also host websites. And boy
oh boy, everytime I send an info packet to someone about hosting a website,
the inevitable question of "will you teach me FTP" arises. Or how I have to
explain that the user's ISP doesn't have reverse DNS configured correctly,
and no, we won't lower our defenses for an MSCE certified ubergeek who ran
through a wizard.
If people can't understand FTP, then how in lord's name will they
understand all this crap? Even if we info hide everything, there will still
be a need to explain it along the way.
Imagine I implement the XML-RPC BloggerAPI in AmphetaDesk. To make it
flexible, I'd add an account system, where a person could create accounts
for their Manilla site, their Blogger sites, their LiveJournal
implementation, a Jabber account and buddy list, or what have you.
The first question is always the hardest.
"Enter the name of the server to post to:"
No, that won't work. "Welp, I post to disobey.com, so d-i-s-o-b-e-y.com.
Whoo! Kickass. This is easy!" Failure. Ok. More finite:
"Enter the name of the XML-RPC server to post to:"
I'm sure everyone on this list knows what that means. But my dog? Nope, my
dog is gonna lick his nuts in feverish confusion. And I don't even have a
dog, so that means an awful lot of confusion. "What's an XML-RPC server? I
should call up Morbus's ISP and ask for help!"
Sure, I could make a popup menu: "Choose a server to connect to:" and
include predefined defaults for Blogger, Manilla, and so forth. But what
about Jabber? I can't define a Jabber preset because jabber servers could
be anywhere. The fix, of course, would be to add a second screen: "Enter
the jabber server to connect to:", but that's a second screen. And even if
that's the last screen, my dog's face has gone from elated happiness to
"the daunting task of screen flipping". This, of course, ignores the need
of ever changing the Jabber or Manilla server names. It also ignores a
possible simple/advanced configuration system.
Ok. So we make the perfect UI. Something fails. But what? The XML-RPC
gateway? The Jabber server? The webserver? My internet connection? The
Delete key cos my cursor is at the wrong end of the words? If we hope for a
perfect world of no errors, then we'd ha... no, wait, that'd be stupid. The
world is full of errors, and we're all gonna find them two seconds after we
should have been out the door.
Everyone has been talking about simplicity. But simplicity is a very
relative thing. We all know XML-RPC, we all know some aspects of XML, we
all know how to code in something or other. But we're not recognizing the
person who just called me and said she never knew her mouse had a right
button for clicking.
If all of this wonderful technology is intended for writers to send
themselves screaming across the airwaves, welp, we're not making it very
easy for them to do so. We're making them THINK of writing, and not FEEL
for writing.
My argument is defeated rather easily two different ways:
- in fifty years, when the next generation takes over, none of this
stuff will matter. our child grow up on this stuff. and don't forget
to recycle. in 300 years, some guy I doesn't know will thank me.
- writers stayed away from typewriters when they were first introduced.
ever tried to install a white out ribbon on a Brother typewriter?
yeah, well, I returned mine. I couldn't figure it out either.
We're fighting two different audiences. We're happiest with the audience
who can beam with pride at our intellect: the geeks, the bootstrappers, the
people who work with this crap every day. All this tech is very cool - I
know, I'm one of them [phear my regexp skillz: s/them/you/i].
Again, we're totally ignoring the audience that could give a crap less
about integration, failsafes, decentralization, xml, or any of the other
stuff that rolls off our tongues. They just want to get stuff done. I'm
constantly around these sort of people - my girlfriend rarely uses the
computer. Rarely. She never sends email, she rarely browses the web, and
she gives a big sigh of derision when I point her excitedly to the latest
Flash animation that circles the airwaves.
Likewise, the billing person at my work knows how to use the billing
program. Lord almighty, she tried to sign up for a UBB forum recently. She
asked me every step of the way. She had no clue what the difference between
username or public name was, much less how private messaging versus email
messaging differed. UBB! "The world's most popular message board!" Add
"confusing as hell to someone who doesn't know that she needn't register to
read posts!" She works at an internet provider. Wait. Again. Slowly. She
works at an internet service provider. And it's not like she's lost in the
shuffle - it's a mom and pop. She's the mom.
I'm a geek and I don't find Radio Userland very simplistic at all (no
offense, Userland people). I don't "get" the purpose, the menu items are
confusing, and I know very little about this outlining crap. I just wanted
to read news, I guess. Instead, I can include mp3s and let other people
know what I'm listening to. Um. Alright.
Dave and the Userland people have the right idea: "increase the amount of
people broadcasting to no one in particular". But it seems they're only
catering [3] to the people who have plenty of time to learn new concepts,
to learn confusing UIs, and to figure out a bunch of new terms they've
never heard before. Upstream? You mean, upload? My dog still tells me he
downloads files off his floppy disk and then uploads them to his email
program.
Today, someone called me and asked where the JPEG program on her computer
was so she could open up a picture of her children. I spent fifteen minutes
with her. She could not cross the bridge, no matter how I described it:
"file format", "not a program", "type of image file", "double click the
file and the correct program will open", "no, not in your Programs Files.
oh. you don't know where you saved them? open up Windows Expl... you don't
know what that is. OoOkkk." It got worst. The sad thing is, she could have
been a brilliant writer.
Before I get looped into the "We Hate Jakob" fan club, I'm going to move on.
Recently, Dave posted the following:
>Basic advice, if you do a desktop aggregator, please look at supporting
>XML-RPC, both server-side and as a client; if you're not already doing so
First off, yes, AmphetaDesk will support XML-RPC. I'm still debating
on whether it will be a plugin or part of the standard distribution.
First question, Dave: what would be the purpose of a server-side XML-RPC
AmphetaDesk? I don't get what an XML-RPC server would do. Accept
subscription requests from afar? Mirror subscriptions amongst like servers
running on different boxes? Send aggregated usage information?
If cable, DSL and always on connections are getting more prominent, and
AmphetaDesk (and Headline Viewer, and Radio Userland) create servers on an
always-on Internet connection, then we've just devised another way for
crackers to buffer overflow. Another avenue of attack. And now we want to
want to add yet another public interface of communication into a user's
computer? I'm not sure this is a good thing [4].
As mentioned, AmphetaDesk will eventually support XML-RPC posting.
I sometimes wonder though, if it should. Details are explained below.
- if AmphetaDesk is a news READER, then why should it write?
i made a conscious decision in the beginning that AmphetaDesk
would NOT write. That this was a simple application for people
to READ the news with. That large mindless corporations and
researchers could use this tool to KEEP UP on the world around
them. in some cases, I had envisioned that companies or users
could use this as a possible corporate tool - that the data
they gleaned by reading MORE would give them a corporate
advantage. so, why should they write?
- let's make some quick assumptions here:
- "syndication" is commonly associated with news.
- 90% of the RSS feeds are link-and-comment related.
and throw in a fact:
- I rarely see journalistic or diary feeds. i do not
count "news, news, news, my dog picture, news, news,
met dave winer, here are some pictures, news, news".
along with an observation:
- "via" groups exist. dave links to craig, craig links
to the same thing, cam adds just the link without
the verbiage, doc connects it with how his sister
died (but of course, I don't read Doc cos of his
damn broken permalink craptacular), and then three
weeks from now, some clueless blogger happenstances
across an archive and his little via group starts
it all over again.
In other words. I'm sick to death of the duplication that
is become more prevalent in feeds. Everyone who loves
everyone else needs to stop it. If I read Craig and Brent,
I probably read Dave too. If I read Cam, I probably read
Tomalak's. Stop linking to them. I don't want to read
their site before I get there.
This all comes down to:
- why should my own program make my life more repetitive?
Maybe before I allow a user to turn on the feature, I can
ask a question like "Are you adding more than three sentences
to someone else's posts?" or "Hey! In your current listing,
thirteen other people linked to this site. You're not
being very original, binky. AmphetaDesk will now crash in
a fit of Koontz inspired anger."
I'm certainly prattling alot. I should stop now, rather abuptly. Send it
off before you bore them some more. My pizza is now cold anyways (you DO
read footnotes, don't you?). I also know this is a long email. But I have
decided NOT to break it up into two parts to alleviate your "must ... go to
... bed!" needs. Because we all know that no one reads the second email [5].
[1] http://disobey.com/devilshat/ds011101.htm
[2] I continually deface the moronic end users in this discussion. There's
a specific reason for this - you must must think end users are stupider
than a rock before you develop something. Else, they will surprise you
rather rudely.
[3] I should get offline so I can get a pizza catered. I'm hungry!
[4] I, for one, have a 56k modem. I didn't appreciate all the Code Red
scans. I didn't appreciate having to tell my moronic NT users that yes,
indeed, they were running IIS without having a clue. But my hermit-self is
shining through. Communication is for my invisible dog. Bah!
[5] http://cms.filsa.net/archives/cms-list/2001/Aug/0071.html
--
Morbus Iff ( i am your scary godmother )
http://www.disobey.com/ && http://www.gamegrene.com/
please me: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/wishlist/25USVJDH68554
icq: 2927491 / aim: akaMorbus / yahoo: morbus_iff / jabber.org: morbus