text: Netscape Dumps Critical File, Breaks RSS 0.9 Feeds 137.
  Ack (Score:4, Funny)
  Why would this break RSS readers? (Score:5, Interesting)
  Re:Why would this break RSS readers? (Score:5, Informative)
  The DTD contains more than just the element definitions and hierarchy. Its also used to define entities (&...;) that are non-standard to XML but may be expected in the file. HTML has tons of pre-defined entities but XML only has the core 4. All others are defined in DTDs and loaded on the fly as part of the processing.
  There are ways to turn it off at the lowest levels, but higher-level abstractions/libraries might not give access to that. For example, with JAXP + SAX you can turn off DTD loading, but Jakarta Commons Digester doesn't give a setting where you can trigger that, so Digester tries to load the dtd, and even with validation off you can't change that. My only recourse is to take the DTD lines out of the various config files. (Reason: My JBoss server is deployed in private networks where the server can't reach the internet).
  Re: (Score:1, Redundant)
  why not change your hosts file so that my.netscape.com/publish/formats/rss-0.91.dtd points to a copy on your_local_network/publish/formats/rss-0.91.dtd
  ... (for example, 192.168.1.96 my.netscape.com)
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  we have licensed customers with this (in fact, they're the problem - internally we don't see any problem with having outbound internet access for our servers and trust the firewalls we put up); i can't go telling their IT departments (who are sometimes completely inept) that we need to go mucking around with OS configuration files, especially in Windows.
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  True, but if all they're doing is grabbing a dtd from there, who will notice ? It's offline right now anyway
  ...
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  See my comment elsewhere in this thread - there's some "magic" that Java can do to load a local file as a resource given an external URL but I've never seen a decent example of how to set that up for my own apps.
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  Wow, XML is even more fucked up than I thought.
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  However, with most parsers there is a way to set up a mapping where it can look on the local box for a file matching a specific URL. JBoss, Hibernate, and Struts all do that for DTD files they have in their resp
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  Ever since I started developing on a laptop during my commute, I discovered that XML-based programs like J2EE servers would simply stop working. I experienced the same thing at work where, by default, your desktop applications (namely Eclipse) do not have access to the internet, and the servers will never have access to the "Internet".
  The proper thing to do is for your
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  Yeah, especially when you don't think at all. It has to do with validation, nothing to do with parsing.
  As for validation, should every single possible doctype anyone might think of be hardwired into the XML spec? Here's a free clue: DTDs and XSDs don't have to use http urls, and DTDs even have something called a "system catalog".
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  Basicly this system would do to URNs and URLs what DNS does to domain names and IP numbers.
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  XML has 5 entities (Score:2)
  Small correction: It actually has 5 (< > & " '). The last one wasn't in HTML4.
  Grrrrr (Score:2)
  Re: (Score:2)
  but really, it's 'cause most programmers actually suck at writing libraries, but their libraries get used (and thus, have backwards-compatibility maintenance issues) before they can get them refined into the right way to do things.
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  Re:Then they're broken! (Score:5, Insightful)
  First of all, that's a needless operation. It can take time; don't forget the DNS lookup and all.
  Second of all, it's not as if you could handle any random DTD. Software doesn't work that way. (this is one of the reasons why XML itself is a mostly-lame idea) If the XML doesn't match expectations, you can't convert it to your own internal representation. You probably have a C struct that you need to fill in. Even in some wild interpreted language like perl, you just won't have any use for unexpected data structures and you damn well need the expected data structures.
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  Yes, that's totally feasible. You're mistaking the semantics of document types with the external DTD subset.
  It's true that inventing new element types and putting them in your DTD isn't going to magically make software understand what those element types mean. But DTDs provide other information - for instance, what entity references expand to, which attributes are IDs, and so on. This is useful information and can be processed in a generic fashion.
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  Sure you can. Just show it to the user as-is. It's just a hieararchical tree of text nodes, he should be able to make at least some sense of it. That's one of the reasons why XML is such a cool idea
  :).
  As a side note, that's what Firefox does when it encounters an XML file it doesn't have a stylesheet for.
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  It's called a non-validating processor and it's totally compliant with the XML 1.0 specification [w3.org].
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  Did you read the XML specification? (Score:1, Informative)
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  the probably web (Score:1, Funny)
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  Ugh (Score:4, Insightful)
  According to an article on DeviceForge.com quite a few RSS feeds around the probably web stopped working properly over the past few weeks because Netscape recently stopped hosting the critical rss-0.91.dtd file.
  STOP, Grammar time. Ooooh whoooaaa oh oh...
  Probably someone over at netscape.com simply thought he was cleaning up some insignificant cruft."
  Or Netscape got tired of people using their bandwidth. Regardless of the reasons: if you reference a file on someone's site, it's hardly their fault if they move/change/delete it, and it breaks your stuff.
  Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
  Unnecessary hard coding of something that's not necessarily non-ephemeral.
  I never liked the idea, I'm glad to see that some of my worries are well-founded.
  The point... (Score:4, Insightful)
  Class paths is java are the perfect example to say how it *should* work. Java CLASSPATHs in every application/installation I have seen are site-local, all paths accessible without going over the internet to another site to get classes.
  To be similar, an RSS site should copy this DTD to their local server, or to a server with which they have a concrete understanding of the relationship. Either a commercial agreement with a peer or at least using a server from an organization who explicitly defines the purpose of hosting to be a common place to promote it as a standard.
  Did netscape promise itself to be an organization sharing that DTD explicitly, or did site developers get in the practice because 'it just always was there'?
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  If you don't take a copy, no-one can guarantee that the remote one is always accessible.
  Catch-22.
  How critical is cache coherency in this case? (Score:2)
  How critical is the guarantee that the local copy is identical to the remote copy in this case? If not, then why not cache a known good copy locally and then use the cached copy when the remote one is not accessible?
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  Which is why you have to define at the time of designing your application what would best suit the end user. Is there a situation where the user would prefer that his or her documents become unusable?
  DTDs are different (Score:5, Interesting)
  It is expected that DTDs are hotlinked. For example, if you ever look at html source of a web page, you would see: on the top, and the hotlink goes to somewhere on w3.org. That is because W3 is the authority body that defines the html.
  Since Netscape is the authority body that defines RSS 0.91, it is a bit strange how they stopped hosting the definition.
  In any case, the missing definition won't affect software that processes RSS feeds. It only affects software that checks whether a SGML document is structured properly according to that missing DTD.
  The main interest to this article seems to be the speculation how a deprecated web 1.0 company could end up hiring a clueless webmaster who deletes important files without recognizing its importance.
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  It's not strange; it's just their way of telling everyone that RSS 0.91 is dead and people should stop using it, apparently.
  Simple misspelling (Score:1)
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  RSS is a spec that was created and promoted by Netscape. For proper validation, this remote (Netscape-hosted) file is needed and was supplied by Netscape to facilitate implementation of RSS. Removing it breaks a standard that they promoted. That is, they encouraged people to use this file that they hosted as part of the RSS spec. To reiterate, they told people to use this file a
  Obligatory Lamport quote on distibuted systems (Score:5, Insightful)
  SPOF? (Score:2, Insightful)
  Doesn't AOL own Netscape? (Score:5, Funny)
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  HAHA (Score:5, Funny)
  Host it yourself! (Score:4, Funny)
  Seriously though, relying on some other system so your site will work is a recipe for disaster. It's similar to relying on someone to take you to work everyday. After a while, you get used to that fact that someone else is driving you that you don't even think about it. Then your driver gets deleted somehow. And you're stuck with no way to work.
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  It's even worse if your driver gets somehow deleted while you're on the road. Happens to my XP box all the time.
  So let me get this straight (Score:1, Interesting)
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  Exactly. The problem is that you're supposed to have an XML catalog that lists the location of the DTDs on the local filesystem (at least, that's how 4suite works). If you don't set that up, a validating parser can either fail or fetch the DTD from the URL specified in the document (personally, I prefer that it just fail so that I can fix the problem, but it's not the default).
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  This is a major problem, (Score:5, Funny)
  W3C doctype (Score:1)
  ? Most web tutorials tell you to use the remote file....but if it ever goes down what happens? Is there a reason for it being taught this way?
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  It's not any different, except the w3c is run by intelligent people, and Netscape, apparently, is not.
  I've always thought the full paths were a bit stupid too, and they should have some sort of shortcut standard, one that says "Use w3c's HTML4.0 standard", and the web browser knows how to contruct a path to find w3c standards. That way, when "Use netscape's RSS0.91" standard stopped working, web browsers could have a trivial update, or their config could even be changed manually, to tell them where to find
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  Netscape Says No RSS 0.91 For You (Score:5, Informative)
  It seems as though it just took them 5+ years to follow up on the threat? Primary links are broken, but of course the lively
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  -BA
  Sorry about that (Score:5, Informative)
  Now, why this file was living under my.netscape.com is anybody's guess, but we'll have it restored ASAP. I only wish that someone had brought it to our attention so that I didn't have to find out about it from Slashdot.
  Christopher Finke
  Netscape Developer
  Re:Sorry about that (Score:5, Informative)
  What's the official way to let you know about this sort of thing? I'm not trolling -- the better you can inform folk like us about how to interact with you, the more likely it is you'll get a response when you need it. For example, a quick scan of the Help and FAQ pages linked to off of the Netscape home page shows no mention of how to contact folk like you.
  Re:Sorry about that (Score:5, Informative)
  For something as serious as this, a user could have checked the profile of one of the Netscape Anchors or developers, where many of them list their screennames or websites, and subsequently, their e-mail addresses. (At least, I know I do [netscape.com].) Alternatively, any Netscape.com member could use Netscape sitemail to contact any of the staff members. Obviously, these are unacceptable for normal circumstances, but I wouldn't call this situation a normal circumstance.
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  You gotta be kidding me... (Score:4, Interesting)
  >I only wish that someone had brought it to our attention so that I didn't have to find out about it from Slashdot.
  This rankles.
  Have you EVER tried contacting Netscape from the outside world? Seriously, I can count the number of times:
  *) When my.netscape.com locked out Konqueror (1998?)
  *) When my.netscape.com WITHDREW the ability to embed RSS feed on your "my" page -- actually this was PRE-RSS if I recall. Way before it was commonplace, you could embed Slashdot and Linux Today feeds. Then they killed it, presumably because they got enough users or some pointy haired reason. 1999.
  *) When my.netscape.com adopted a shitty policy of DELETING all your mail if you don't login for 30 days. This did not seem to be publicised by an actual email. They don't seem to delete the mailbox itself, which violates RFCs I'm sure and basically insinuates the mailbox is active. I lost tons of mail from 1996-2003 (yeah yeah backups. Some things I didn't think I would need later). ?? Happened in 2003. Note that mailboxes were only 5MB still, so I quickly bailed for a 100MB Yahoo account.
  *) The 2001 deletion of Netscape Developer. This lost a ton of Netscape copyrighted Javascript documentation.
  Just TRY contacting Netscape from their page. The best you can do is use the WRONG FORM to submit to some contracter who won't forward it. Or, oh yeah - there's a 900 number for by the minute Support.
  Back when it mattered, there was no 'Google Guy' for Netscape, who would act as an unofficial liason. After Jamie Z left, no one internally tried to fill the shoes of a community facing employee.
  While I'll be eternally grateful for Netscape's open sourcing of their browser. What a different world it is now. Too bad that step is something the current management would never have allowed (that's the perception). I can't think of a more opaque Internet company than today's Netscape. I'm sure there are people who disagree or wish it could be changed (you're here..) but that and a $1 gets you a cup of black coffee. Show this to your boss - there are suggestions here
  Re:You gotta be kidding me... (Score:5, Informative)
  Re: (Score:2)
  Your entire company needs to make a commitment to open dialogue, not just you individually.
  Re: (Score:2, Informative)
  Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
  * The former GM, Jason Calacanis [calacanis.com], blogged extensively about Netscape and encouraged other employees to do the same. He also called out other industry big-wigs [calacanis.com] for "not having time" to blog about their product.
  * Many [fabienne.us] Netscape [neothoughts.com] Anchors [robotskirts.com], Navigators [themulife.com], and developers [efinke.com] have an active blog [sampletheweb.com] where they write about Netscape and/or are available to discuss it.
  * There i
  Re:Sorry about that (Score:4, Insightful)
  Ummm, maybe I'm mising something here, but I would think that your web log would show a spike in 404 errors for this file, right? In my experience, it is helpful to assume that I do not know what I don't know, and to put procedures in place to help make those omissions stick out. So, a scan of your log files not only for this file, but for any others that also have a high number of 404's (especially from a multitude of referers) would be worth investigating.
  BTW, best of luck on the redesign!
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  Doh! <wipes egg from face>. Point made. I would still love to get my hands on their logs to see what other important pages may be failing.
  Why should anyone contact you? (Score:1, Funny)
  But hey, from where I sit Netscape is anyhow run by a bunch of liberal arts graduates and doesn't have any technical competence left.
  Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
  2) I found it amusing that the
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  According to the article, Google and Firefox's feed readers don't mind that the DTD's gone missing, but Microsoft Live's RSS Feed Gadget does
  Re:Sorry about that (Score:4, Interesting)
  I only wish that someone had brought it to our attention so that I didn't have to find out about it from Slashdot.
  If you are looking to learn a lesson from this, how about this one: URLs are forever!
  Whenever I make a change to a live server, my biggest concern is to not break existing usage. If I ever change an URL, I make sure to redirect old usage to new usage that's just as good. And if I'm ever not sure something is used, I generally look back at least three months in the logs. Especially if you've inherited a pile full of mystery, good analytical tools for your server logs are vital. Trying to run even a modestly-sized site without them is like running a large store without tracking your inventory: your life will become a series of unfortunate surprises.
  Re:Sorry about that (Score:5, Informative)
  And BTW, it appears that the DTD file will be restored early tomorrow morning at the latest.
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  sacked (Score:2)
  And this is not the first time it has happened. Every time I install netscape on an old iMac, it stalls out for like 90 seconds on initia launch because something else on your server the browser depends on has been deleted. A few times I had a very hard time installing Netscape because it refused to quit digging for that page on launch. I never did figure out exactly what it was it was looking for. (something to do with first run registration I
  Huh? (Score:2, Redundant)
  Seriously bad programming (Score:5, Insightful)
  These URL's are mainly there for their Uniqueness, not so much as for a place of quaranteed storage. Of course, they are also a nice place to look for the actual definition, but after that you would need a local repository. This is the first thing an XML library should support, and the first thing a moderately intelligent programmer should look at. I get *very* annoyed if this kind of basic rules are ignored. And I've even seen them ignored by people pointing to the XML digital signature definitions, where security and reliability should be the first requirements in the design.
  Also, what would happen if w3c.org or netscape.com go the way of the Gopher? If they go bust? It's a quickly changing world out there.
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  The URLs there were initially intended to be used as unique namespaces since each domain had someone that could guarantee uniqueness inside that domain, not really as actual retrievable URLs, although they were usually valid and
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  You mean like an EntityResolver? Of course I agree on the last statements.
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  If the w3c collapses web standards are screwed anyway.
  Logs? (Score:3, Interesting)
  If I was a new hire at some old company where everyone else had been let go, I'd at least check out the logs and see what is being used? and then if some file is being hit 1,000's of times a day.. maybe ask a few questions..
  IE7 is already broken anyways (Score:1)
  A rewording... (Score:3, Funny)
  127.0.0.1, anyone? (Score:2)
  Deja Vu (Super Dupe?) (Score:2)
  I'd swear today I was looking at the
  After a little searching, I've found the exact same story, from April 2001:
  Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
  I look forward to reading this story on
  Content based addressing (Score:2)
  The web needs some scheme for content based addressing. Like the urn:sha1 scheme used in gnutella. This (and some sort of reasonable caching scheme) would do a lot to alleviate problems like this. It could also help a lot with the Slashdot effect.
  This Explains Why People Hate the IT Department (Score:2, Interesting)
  You mean to tell me that every RSS reader references - and actually tries to FIND and DOWNLOAD - a specific SPECIFICATION hosted on ONE SITE ON THE PLANET?
  Are you people utter fucking morons or what?
  I can't believe design decisions like this.
  I'm especially irritated because I have just spent the last week trying to find an rdiff-backup or rsync that functions on Windows WITHOUT A FUCKING 2GB or 4GB FILE SIZE LIMITATION! Even the Cygwin people could only tell me to "try it
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  Resolved (Score:2)
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  Incomplete Quote (Score:2)
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  "RSS readers don't do anything with the DTD or try to access it at all. This didn't break anything."
  You, sir, are wrong.
  XML parsers (which RSS readers use to... you guessed it, parse the XML) will try to look at things referenced in the DOCTYPE declarations.
  I guess I can vaguely understand the desire to have the 'authoritative' provider of the DTD in one place, but it's always made me uneasy to have this single point of failure for the potentially many consumers of a DTD.
  It's apparently also made m
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