Today's Bible Lesson: Don't Barter with God

On the June 1 Back to the Bible radio show, which airs on 1,200 religious stations around the world, host Woodrow Kroll told listeners how I could seek forgiveness from God:

Jesus wants to take the burden of your guilt away. I read this little story. I just thought I had to pass it on to you. The question was asked, "How much would the Vatican pay for the pope's name?" Now that's not a theoretical question. A fellow by the name of Rogers Cadenhead, who is an admitted domain hoarder, bought the domain www.benedictxvi before Pope John Paul died. What he thought was, I'll get the domain name. When the pope dies, if Benedict becomes the next pope, I'll own the name; they'll have to buy the name from me.

Now he knew that this was a good deal, because the name www.popebenedictxvi sold on e-bay for $ 16,000. So he thought his was in like flint, except Cadenhead said this. He was a good Roman Catholic and he said, "I don't want the money. I'm not going to anger 1.1 billion Catholics and my grandmother," he quipped.

So he wasn't interested in really selling the name. But there was something he wanted. So he told the Vatican, "I will give the name to you, and here are three things I want. Number one, I want one of those hats." I have no idea what what he's talking about -- maybe the pope's hat. "And number two," he says, "I want a free night's stay at the Vatican Hotel." Ridiculous things. But number three was really important. He said, "I want complete absolution -- no questions asked -- for the third week of March 1987".

Now I don't know what went on the third week of March 1987, but it appears to me something went on pretty big in his life that he needed absolution for. See, what he is saying is this: "If I could buy forgiveness, it would be worth any price I had to pay." And what I'm saying is this. You can't buy forgiveness, but you can confess your sin and get forgiveness free.

What Peter shows us in this passage is, Jesus is anxious to forgive us, even when we don't really come clean with Him -- when we answer "Do you love Me?" with "Uh, I like You pretty much." Jesus is merciful and kind and willing to forgive. And if He can forgive Peter of what Peter did to Him, He can surely forgive you.

Domains · Religion · 2007/06/06 · 16 COMMENTS · Link

RSS Specification (Version 2.0.9) Published

The proposal to revise the RSS specification has passed 5-1 with RSS Advisory Board members Matthew Bookspan, Rogers Cadenhead, Christopher Finke, Randy Charles Morin and Paul Querna voting in favor, Eric Lunt voting against and members James Holderness, Meg Hourihan, Jenny Levine and Jason Shellen abstaining.

The Extending RSS section of the specification has been clarified with the addition of the words "and attributes" twice in the following sentence:

A RSS feed may contain elements and attributes not described on this page, only if those elements and attributes are defined in a namespace.

No other changes were made. All edits to the specification are logged. This revision of the document has the version number 2.0.9.

Rss · 2007/06/06 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

Marc Andreesen: 'Web 2.0' is an Empty Buzzword

As a result of the widespread adoption of language like "Web 2.0 companies" and the "Web 2.0 space" -- and startups referring to themselves as such, most of which will fail -- you get a predictably cynical backlash from people who then dismiss the whole category as trendy marketing hype full of me-too wannabes and in the process throw out the baby with the bathwater and dismiss all the legitimately new and exciting products and companies that are being created all around us.

As an entrepeneur, I am frankly torn as to whether or not to even post this piece.

It may be in my best interest to have more of my fellow entrepreneurs off chasing trends and pitching their "Web 2.0 startups" to the latest enterprise software VC who is now "doing Web 2.0 deals" instead of building real products that might compete with one of my companies.

Business · 2007/06/05 · Comment · Link

Buying a Dot-Com Domain for the RSS Board

I acquired the domain name rssboard.com this past weekend for the RSS Advisory Board, which publishes its site at an .org domain.

The owner put the domain up for sale on Sedo for $250, which was a reasonable expense to avoid losing type-in visitors who think the site address ends in .com.

Sedo handled the payment escrow and domain transfer process pretty well, calling me on the phone several times to help move things along. From start to finish, it took 16 days. The board operates with a $0 budget and expenditures like this are rare. Web hosting costs are negligible since I'm operating four servers for my various sites and they're not close to capacity in traffic, database access or CPU usage.

Rss · 2007/06/04 · 1 COMMENT · Link

Apple Commercials Make Microsoft Lovable

Here in the present, while discussing some recent Apple commercials in which an Apple hipster out-talks a nerdy Windows guy, it seemed almost as if Jobs and Gates were acting in starring roles in the same ads. Jobs, in his black turtleneck and jeans and stubbled beard, looked ready for a night on the town, while Gates, in his striped, button-down shirt and slacks and black shoes, looked ready to get down to business.

And when Jobs tried selling Gates on the appeal of the new Apple ads, Gates wasn't buying.

"Part of those commercials is not to be mean, but the guys like each other," Jobs said.

Gates scratched his chin skeptically. Jobs laughed nervously. "PC guy is great," Jobs said. "He's got a big heart."

Gates added, "His mother loves him."

I think a lot more people love the Windows dork played by John Hodgman than just his mother.

I'd like to see The Ad Whisperers take on those commercials, because I think they're a huge misfire on Apple's part. The Mac hipster played by Justin Long is insufferably smug compared to his problem-plagued comic foil, who ends up looking like a well-intentioned underdog unruffled by adversity. He's like Charlie Brown, falling over and over for Lucy's promise to let him kick the football.

When I spot one of those commercials as I'm blipping through Tivo, I stop to see how Hodgman fares. Like ad critic Seth Stevenson in Slate, I'm completely rooting for him:

The ads pose a seemingly obvious question -- would you rather be the laid-back young dude or the portly old dweeb? -- but I found myself consistently giving the "wrong" answer: I'd much sooner associate myself with Hodgman than with Long.

Hodgman, a Mac devotee since 1984, thinks his PC Guy conveys arrogance:

Mac has always gotten the design and the interface down pat. They just know it. PC's efforts to emulate this, and its constant failing, and its self-satisfied arrogance about it being the most used platform in the world, all of that made it very easy to craft a character who, while he is a boob, and often concerned about how he comes off, at his core really feels bad for the Mac. Is really so delusional to believe he’s much cooler than the Mac. The whole reason they're standing in that white room is because he’s trying to help the Mac out.

I'm not seeing that at all. At a time when the "Wow is Now" campaign for Windows Vista is laying an egg and Gates' exit leaves the company with a huge hole in the evangelism department, Apple has put the most sympathetic face on Microsoft in years.

Microsoft · Apple · Television · 2007/05/31 · 6 COMMENTS · Link

Clarifying the RSS 2.0 Specification

I voted for the proposal to clarify the RSS 2.0 specification this morning. I think it's the proper interpretation of what the spec means regarding namespace support, and the board's the proper place to address it.

This is, of course, a controversial position. I have never found a non-controversial position involving RSS, other than "escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed."

The political debate between advocates of the board and RSS 2.0 lead author Dave Winer boils down to two positions:

1. Nobody should speak with authority on the RSS spec.
2. Somebody should.

The board's been that somebody for four years, though we've used the ability sparingly. I think we should decide what we think the spec means, edit accordingly and take our lumps.

Rss · 2007/05/29 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

Dave Winer and the RSS Advisory Board

The current proposal to clarify the RSS 2.0 specification has drawn a response from Dave Winer:

Every so often I get an email asking what's up with the RSS Advisory Board.

Here's what I thought in May 2004: "This group is not a standards organization. It does not own RSS, or the spec, it has no more or less authority than any other group of people who wish to promote RSS."

Today I think it's even less than that. It basically stopped functioning later in 2004. The people involved went on to do other things. In the meantime RSS kept growing and growing.

Did RSS actually need an "advisory board?" No, it didn't.

I think it's great that people care about RSS. Keep supporting it, and if you want to help people use it, great. Just don't pretend there's any official board or body or whatever behind it, because there isn't.

Winer wishes the board he founded in 2003 didn't exist, so he's rewriting history to claim it folded up shop after he resigned. But if you go back and read his resignation, you'll find that he encouraged us to keep working on the spec and help developers:

After giving it much thought, I've decided to resign from the RSS Advisory Board, effective July 1. I feel that the process for clarifying the spec is now well-understood by the existing members, and we have started a positive working relationship with several leading aggregator developers. ... I wish the continuing members of the board the very best, and of course I will continue to be a huge booster of RSS and syndication technology, and I will offer my opinion, through this blog, naturally, as always.

The board's serving a useful purpose, as demonstrated by the 1,300 posts on the RSS-Public mailing list and a best-practices profile for RSS that's nearing completion after 14 months of development.

As the lead author of RSS 2.0, Winer continues to be the most respected voice on matters related to the format. But he refuses to say anything that would help developers resolve points of confusion in the spec, such as the issue of namespace attributes.

Until he does, the board will do its best to address them. Our vote on revising the spec begins in five days.

Rss · 2007/05/24 · 15 COMMENTS · Link

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