[PP-main] Technical/implementation matters

[Nick Lothian]

> On Mon, Mar 06, 2000 at 09:20:53AM +0930, Nick Lothian wrote:
> > I disagree. I think RDF has taken off quite well - try and name a site
that
> > doesn't have a RDF backend.
>
> This is no doubt true. But what is the RDF used for? Do we see a large
amount
> of syndication between sites, based on RDF? I can't think of any, off
hand.
>

We see lots of syndication of headlines, which is what RDF was designed for.

> Also, it's kind of messy to use RDF, since RDF is intended as a
descriptive,
> not containing, format. In other words, to publish a news item, you need
to
> use an RDF file to describe it, and another file which is the actual
content.
> And that means we still need to find a format for that content, and it
can't
> be HTML, it needs to be some XML DTD, since we're going to be marking up
in a
> very abstract way.
>

Yes, I agree with this - I'm not proposing we use RDF, simply use a single
XML file similar to a RDF file, perhaps with links to other URLs  to get the
actual content.

> So I propose to make an XML format that encapsulates the data you would
> normally put in the RDF/RSS file (perhaps even by embedding directly,
using
> XML namespaces), but we need a format for the actual data, and no such
format
> exists.
>

I think I agree with that. What do you mean by "a format for the actual
data", though? Do you mean the formatting of the story or something like
that?

>
> > What about when people start writing non-website clients. Think of all
the
> > little "Show Current Stories on Slashdot" applets around. How can a push
> > protocol handle things like that - especially over a dialup connection?
>
> The protocol can easily handle push and pull. Especially since it's a
matter
> of "push to me when I'm connected".
>

So what if the client disconnects without informing the server it doesn't
need a feed anymore? Does the server attempt to keep pushing? Or maybe
attempt to push a number of times, and them stop?

Doesn't this make it extreamly vunrable to denial of service attacks?