Eye on Winer

Dave has some pretty benign opinions on the new Google offering, nothing really worth writing home about, except that he claims that he “predicted” it. Is it really a “prediction” if you get an inside tip and probably break an embargo/NDA to disclose it?

It is interesting to me that Dave claims to be “really pissed” at Microsoft for “wasting” billions on Vista. That’s an awfully premature analysis, isn’t it? It’s pretty much what we hear every time MS comes out with something new… all of the linux and Apple nerds gather around and tell us it sucks, the tech community (who is very enamored with those nerds) agrees, and that’s it. At any rate, it’s an interesting choice of words because he didn’t say he thought they missed an opportunity or made a bad decision. He’s angry. Because he’s hosting on Windows and, I guess, just found out that it’s a dead end. Dave thinks it’s a dead end because it’s on Windows… but it’s more likely to be a “dead end” because it’s on Frontier.

…in other news…

Yesterday on Twitter Dave called an un-named (male) reporter a cunt. It was a bizarre response to another Twitter user expressing disgust at the latest report that McCain once called his wife that same name in a very public setting. It’s a really bizarre reaction.

“McCain is reprehensible for calling his wife a cunt.”
“Oh yeah? Well this guy I’m talking to is a cunt.”

I can’t decide if it feels more like a “So what? Maybe she is a cunt!” comment or a “Look, I can use the naughty word, too!” comment. Is it suddenly okay to use the term in (presumably) polite conversation because it’s a novel target? What about “bitch”? Would it be alright for some middle-class white guy to call Dave a “little bitch”? Could he then respond to call that guy a “nigger?”

I’m not really convinced that “cunt” is any less misogynistic when it’s used against a man, nor that “nigger” is any less racist when used against a white person.

It’s disgusting that, on top of people actually paying attention to this guy, he seemed to get no push-back on Twitter from it that I could find.

Update: Dave had a great justification for it today: “It was just a twit you twit”. How silly of me. I didn’t realize that made tossing slurs around okay.

Update 2: Dave appears to have deleted his “it’s just a twit” twit. Interesting. It’s not on his main feed, but you can still get there from the direct link. Not sure what that means.

Dave Winer links today to a blogger who declares Google = evil because his site shows up with a “This site may harm your computer” warning in Google search results. “I’ve reposted his piece here in full, in case Google/Firefox is blocking his site,” Winer writes.

Neither Winer nor the blogger appears to have made any attempt to learn why this happens.

When Google detects known malware on a site, it puts up the warning to let people know it’s a dangerous site to visit. Google also posts information on the Google Webmaster console for that site, so the webmaster can find out what triggered the warning.

In this case, the blogger’s using WordPress on Bluehost. The most likely cause for the warning is that old versions of WordPress have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited to add malware. This blog was probably hit before WordPress was upgraded.

Google’s doing the right thing here. There was malware on this blogger’s site that could have done any number of evil things to his visitors (some of which are legally actionable). Instead of turning a blind eye, Google flagged the problem.

Winer and the blogger could have learned all of this by searching evil Google for the phrase “This site may harm your computer.”

Dave linked, via Twitter, to a blog post by Marc Canter encouraging us to boycott Google because they had the temerity to… *gasp* …sell their services to those nasty, nasty republicans.

Heh.

It might be the silliest thing I’ve ever read on Canter’s blog. In the next post, blames his mistakes on those nasty, nasty Republicans. I mean, really, if Marc had read as far as the second paragraph he would’ve realized what was going on:

As Official Innovation Provider, Google Inc. will enhance the GOP’s online presence with new applications, search tools, and interactive video. In addition, Google will help generate buzz and excitement in advance of the convention through its proven online marketing techniques.

While I wouldn’t put spinning trivial things past either of the parties (aside: how anyone can see enough difference between them to identify with one and hate the other is beyond me.), this press release sounds like the kind any business would use for the same kind of “event”. It’s not “lying”, it’s some young republican staffer with an MBA putting it to good use.

I wonder if Dave will write a post about how those nasty, nasty Republicans are at it again.

In other news… Dave is going to be announcing a “brilliant” (he says so himself) new use RSS tomorrow. I really hope it’s a contraption I can attach to the hind-quarters of my dog that updates an RSS feed every time he has a bowel movement… following him around the yard is getting kinda old.

Dave Winer hates FeedBurner, the feed publishing and stat tracking service bought by Google last year for $100 million, as he showed in this recent mopey Twitter update:

i’ll get flamed for this, but that’s how i felt about feedburner. never even said hello, much less thanks.

Because he hates FeedBurner, Winer linked to a weblog post yesterday accusing the service of playing favorites to benefit Google Reader over the competition. The charge was bogus and quickly refuted.

This is just the latest example of Winer spreading disingenuous bullshit, FUD and outright paranoia about the company.

Why he expects to be thanked for this remains a mystery.

Take a look at this pile of conceit and condescension:

Scoble has a piece today on Apple’s brand promise that nails it precisely, never seen him hit the mark so well. Congrats. The other day at lunch I was telling the Uncov guys that despite what they may think, Scoble really is brilliant. Read this piece, I feel completely vindicated (though sometimes I read his stuff and shake my head in disbelief at how he could be so wrong).

Dave never ceases to amaze me with things like this. How could any normal person write a paragraph like that, and about someone they call a friend? If Scoble wrote that about Dave, he’d have hell to pay.

They will break us, I’m sure of it. If I told you how, they’d unleash a storm of hate at me very much like what you get when you criticize Apple.

Irony, thy name is Dave Winer. First of all… Dave has been “sliming” Google for as long as I can remember. He’s the Commander-in-Chief of Google FUD. To say nothing of the hate-storm that he himself directs at anyone who disagrees with him or questions him in a way in which he doesn’t approve.

Later he criticizes Apple for hypocrisy and lack of humility. If you submitted Dave as a character in a pilot of a TV show, he’d be tossed as being too unbelievable.

This is something of a cheap-shot, but I laughed when I read it:

The error messages say something isn’t operational, which isn’t really a word in the English language.

Umm… Dave?

As for the main point of his post, I agree with it. I use both Macs and PCs. My PCs work better. My Macs work pretty well, too, but they’re a long way from “just working.” That said, Dave is not a credible source for this, since he’s demonstrated, time and again, his complete inability to figure out easy pieces of tech that weren’t designed specifically for him.

Dave’s response to Google’s announcement is amazing, sad, and revealing. From the moment Dave even heard about Google’s plan to create an open API for social networking apps, he went into full FUD mode.

10/31: He tries to undermine the whole API by parroting his common gripe: that he doesn’t get to keep his data. Of course, this is silly. Google released an API, not an application. One could just as easily say that Dave’s baby XML-RPC is “evil” because applications can be made that don’t allow you access to the data.

11/1: Noticing that his preemptive strike didn’t quell the excitement, he moved on to a “Not so fast, my friend” post, implying that OpenSocial has no users and is basically vaporware. He ended with this conceit: “Me, I’ve been around this block so many times and it’s boring. Let’s see some software then I’ll let you know if this means anything.” He also makes a veiled reference to the fact that he’s a old dinosaur who can’t learn new tricks, saying that Google is keeping “people like [him]” away… what sort of people are those? People who don’t do anything but XML-RPC.

Later that day he takes a generic shot a Google, complaining he doesn’t think it’s the way he used to think it was.

11/3: Flailing about, hoping something will make Google’s new venture a failure, Dave tries to go all Deep Throat on us, speculating as to what Google is like internally. This is the corporate version of an ad hominem… instead of debating the merits of the software the company produces, he’s going to criticize them because their employees are cocky… and that’s really just him talking out of his ass, too. In the end he comes as close as he can for begging for an “insider” to confirm his story. I’d guess he got plenty of emails from people who are happy to work at Google… but he didn’t publish anything, so I’d guess he hasn’t gotten a gripe email yet.

11/4: Instead of talking about why OpenSocial doesn’t do what it aims to well enough, he’s now complaining that it doesn’t do what he wants it to do… I wonder if Dave was disappointed when his new car wasn’t able to fly and wash his laundry. He writes: “[S]uppose I wanted to compete with Google, MySpace, Plaxo and LinkedIn, well, where’s the spec that shows me how to do that?” The spec, Dave? The “spec” that allows you to compete with other social networks is called “machine code” and there’s a LOT of different ways to come up with the “machine code” to do it.

My favorite part of this little rant is this: “[Google is] not very good at APIs. This one is a loser, for sure.” Wow. So not only has he admitted that he doesn’t know what the API is, but he’s already determined that it sucks… because… all google APIs suck? Pot/Kettle?

What’s going to be really funny is watching to see how much buy-in this “loser” gets.

(See, also, the comments to this post)

Did I miss the transition period? Dave says today that he trusts Google. My first reaction was puzzlement. After all, for all of the FUD he spews, it seems odd for him to now talk about how much he trusts them.

No worries, though, this was another FUD piece talking in the abstract about Feedburner “breaking” feeds. Let’s call a spade a spade here. What he’s really talking about, again, is Feedburner starting to output ATOM feeds instead of RSS. He writes:

Even though I don’t choose to use Feedburner, because I subscribe to the feeds of people who do, I am effected when they change the format of their feeds. When Google does this they inevitably break products that compete with theirs, the most obvious being Google Reader, but there are also server-side products that compete with Google’s that depend on being able to read RSS feeds.

There is exactly one feed reader of which I am aware that does not support ATOM. I bet you can guess which one that is: the one Dave wrote himself and absolutely refuses to add ATOM support to. Every other major (and probably minor) feed reader handles both RSS and ATOM perfectly well.

This, as I’ve written before, is the problem. Feedburner could eliminate RSS feeds and nobody but Dave would notice.

Now, amazingly, it seems as if Google may be doing this. I’ve seen it myself, files that mysteriously change format and break apps and users, and I’ve heard about it from a couple of developers. No one has said anything publicly, that I know of.

Small correction: this doesn’t “break apps”, applications that don’t support ATOM are already broken. Further, I’m not sure what it means to break a user (a phrase Dave uses twice), but he doesn’t spare the hyperbole and FUD:

Will someday I look in my spreadsheet files and find that Google has changed the numbers? Or will emails from execs at Yahoo contain racial slurs or outright lies? See how much damage Google can do because we trust them?

That’s right, Dave. Choosing not to support an inferior (and waning) file format is exactly the same as violating privacy agreements and maliciously destroying user data. Exactly the same.

When you type a search term into Google Toolbar, it pops up suggestions for some high-traffic keywords, trying to anticipate your interests based on what other users have requested. If you look for Dave Winer, here are the current suggestions:

• dave winer blog
• dave winer asshole
• dave winer threatens
• dave winer asks
• dave winer scripting news

Competition is so fierce for the search “Dave Winer asshole” that Eye on Winer ranks 14th.

Dave and I agree on one thing…

And in this case, I think I understated the danger of concentrating so much power in Feedburner, and its successor, Google.

If FeedBurner had the amount of power that Dave thinks they do, I would be concerned.

The problem is that they don’t have anywhere NEAR the power to do the things Dave claims they can do. Please. Ruin syndication and feedreaders by ruining their own services down? That’s like saying that the First Methodist Church here in town can destroy christianity by burning their sanctuary down. It’s more than a little silly.

The reason he won’t even approach acknowledging this fact is because he knows that people will start wondering what power they do have that might be scaring Dave and the answer will be “the power to turn the tide against RSS and toward ATOM.”

So don’t expect him to give any air-time to the idea that Google doesn’t have as much power in the RSS space as he takes as given.

Dave’s real concern about FeedBurner having been laid bare, he has written a new post to try to pave it over.

The whole thing is predicated on logic so poor that it demonstrates either abject stupidity or extreme disingenuousness. I don’t think Dave is stupid, so I have to assume he’s deliberately trying to muddy the waters here. (The third option, I guess, is that he’s so blinded by his dislike for Google that he’s highly paranoid)

He claims that he’s worried about “tying” FeedBurner feeds to Google Reader. The argument is “Google could make it so that google reader only accepts feedburner feeds!” Sure, they could. And they would almost instantly lose their membership on Google Reader to a different feed reader. I’d export my feeds and head right back to FeedDemon the minute that happened. So would a lot of other people. And that’s assuming that Google would even do that. To try to support this argument, Dave provides the following:

It could end up meaning “doesn’t work at all.” It’s quite possible in the second or third iteration that Google drops support for non-Feedburner feeds. It wouldn’t be unprecedented, far from it. Google Blogoscoped created a long list of Google products that “prefer” other Google products. I’ve never seen Google not do this when they had the chance. The instant they bought Blogger they tied it to their toolbar. If they had used an open API the toolbar would have worked with all blogging tools. Google just doesn’t think that way, sorry to say.

They “tied” Blogger to their Toolbar. By “tied” he means “added some features to toolbar that work well wtih blogger.” The Toolbar is not required to use Blogger. Having a blogger blog is not required to get the Toolbar. So these two things are not even “tied” in any real sense of the word. Let’s assume, arguendo, that they are.

Google didn’t make other things work worse with the toolbar. They didn’t make Blogger work worse with other external blogging tools. Speaking in economic terms, they didn’t reduce anyone’s utility. All they did was add utility to a certain pairing of services.

This is totally different from making Google Reader only work for FeedBurner feeds, which would clearly reduce the utility of Reader’s users.

So his example is worthless and his logic is flawed beyond repair.

The only thing left is paranoid FUD: “OMG! They could break everything!!1″

…doesn’t the OPML Editor have an “auto update” feature? Couldn’t Dave send down an update to delete all of the data of people who speak positively or Google? Or negatively of him?

Shouldn’t we be rallying against that?