8 ms·
So Dave Winer gets sanctimonious about a tiny change to a small side-product of Google's and he extrapolates many conclusions based on Mayer's entirely natural
by danilocampos 13y ago
So Dave Winer gets sanctimonious about a tiny change to a small side-product of Google's and he extrapolates many conclusions based on Mayer's entirely natural eye rolling.
As a meta comment, Winer is a unfortunate last name for this gentleman given the overall tone and timbre of what he has to say. Google giving preferential treatment to Blogger content, by giving special SERP positioning, distinctive formatting, or other embellishment, would have been worth making a fuss about. That would have been a big deal.
But this is a little button on a toolbar that many Google users never even used. And it's only for creating content, which is a side-show to Google's main purpose, which is finding content.
This is how you squander your capital.
- treenyc 13y agoI am glad David pointed this out. It may seem like a small thing, however what he brought up can be seen as an Out-of-integrity behavior as a positive phenomenal. And I am not talking about morality, good vs. bad. Think for a moment about the Law of Gravity: there is no such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ gravity; As economist Michael Jensen pointed out Integrity as “what it takes for a person to be whole and complete....And an individual is whole and complete when their word is whole and complete, and their word is whole and complete when they honour their word." And this law seems work just gravity for all human-beings (not just Google executive). Out-of-integrity behavior has been pervasive, both on an organizational and an individual basis, and that attributed to the unworkabilities in the world. More about Integrity a positive phenomenal can be read here: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1511274 http://ssrn.com/abstract=1511274
- jerrya 13y agoMaking fun of some guy's name? Pretending to not understand the importance of blogthis! in a world where Yahoo just bought Tumblr, or where the subscribe to rss buttons mostly work to allow the user to choose an rss feed reader of their own choice, or where Microsoft was told to make sure users could pick their favorite email apps, firewall apps, etc.? This danilo is how you squander your capital.
- davewiner 13y agoNever heard that one before about my last name. Genius. ;-)
- josh2600 13y agoI had you labeled as a lush (that's a joke about being a 'wine'-r). A few generations back in my family we had actual whiners, so I empathize with you. I mean, consider the bright side, you could've gone into politics with a last name like "Weiner"...
- davewiner 13y agoDon't push it. There's nothing funny about ad hominem attacks. Really.
- josh2600 13y agoCe la vie. It wasn't intended as an attack, really. I was sympathizing with you as my greatgrandmother actually had the last name whiner, but I understand how my remarks might've appeared as intended to insult you. My apologies, I was simply trying to inject a bit of wit into the discussion :(.
- MartinCron 13y agoI empathize with Dave here, people take one look at my last name and assume that I'm punctual and predictable.
- jrockway 13y agoI had a teacher in high school call me "stone path" after summer break. So close!
- corin_ 13y agoWhile I didn't find his comment particularly funny, I'm not sure I'm seeing the attack in it - just reads to me as a light-hearted joke about names, in contrast to the top comment which genuinely described you as a "whiner".
- curiouslurker 13y agoDave Winer needs to let go of the past. He did good work for the developer community in the past but hey, move on. This is a gentleman who is still bitter because "I am no longer invited to join the boards of startups. To you young programmers, if you think Javascript is that different from C, think again [and, please, invite me to join your boards, sob, sob, sob]" :)
- pfortuny 13y agoI think you probably need to know him a little more?
- chris_wot 13y agoUh, Javascript may have similar syntactical structure, but it is entirely unlike C in every way that counts that I can think of.
- mindcrime 13y agoInteresting. If I thought Dave Winer was interested in that sort of thing, I'd probably invite him to be on our board. I mean, he's not exactly some Joe Schmoo who just fell of the tomato truck. He has done some incredibly important work for the Web over the years[1]. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Winer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Winer
- davewiner 13y agoI'm programming in JavaScript these days, and I don't think it's like C. Who are you arguing with??
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- scottru 13y agoUnnecessary ad hominems aside, you're confusing what we know now (BlogThis! didn't become big and important) with what was a realistic concern then (distributing easy-to-use one-click blogging that biased towards one platform would grow that platform substantially, and that this would actually matter). Worth noting, of course, that some part of Tumblr's growth has come precisely from their equivalent of a BlogThis! button - it just took a few more years.
- corresation 13y agoUnnecessary ad hominems aside The linked article isn't just saying "Yahoo may change the terms of their deal" (and pray they don't alter it further), which everyone knows they can and almost certainly will. It's saying "I, Dave Winer, will draw from my own personal experience, including my interaction with one of the participants of this deal, to speak with authority on this". Like bringing up a character witness in a defense trial, such supporting arguments legitimately open up the speaker themselves to critique.
- icambron 13y agoSuch as his name?
- jlgreco 13y agoNo, that he is whining. He isn't being questioned because of his name; he is being questioned because he is whining. The quip about his name is not an ad hominem because the quip is immaterial to the argument. There is no "you should question this because his name is Foo", rather "you should question this because he is acting Fooish, which incidentally sounds similar to his name." Immature, but not an ad hominem.
- davewiner 13y agoHoney, I think you're whining. Just sayin.
- minimax 13y agoHave you been through an acquisition like this before? I once worked for a small company that was acquired by a much bigger company, and I have to say Dave's thoughts about the acquirers making lots of empty promises to the acquirees to keep them happy sounded very familiar.
- at-fates-hands 13y agoI had a similar experience. The CEO even warned the developers to find work elsewhere since the companies products would probably be dissolved since all the bigger company was interested in was some of our technology. I was smart along with a few others. The rest of the employees rolled the dice and lost. They discontinued the entire line of products and canned any of the employees who came over with the acquisition. Within a year, there were no traces of our startup, just a few new products using our technology. I'm still bitter about it. . .
- pyre 13y agoYahoo! has a history with screwing up while trying to integrate acquisitions into their ecosystem (e.g. forcing people to drop their old account for a Yahoo! account, with an email address, etc, etc). Yahoo! will honor these promises for a while if they don't want to drive the Tumblr users away to other microblogging platforms.
- rhizome 13y agoMy advice is to become part of the larger company as quickly as possible, if that's the kind of thing you would like to do, or quit as soon as the acquisition is announced, especially if you're screwed in the equity department. Whether you stay or go, abandon ship.
- Udo 13y agoWe're talking about someone who contributed a lot to the internet as it is today, so a minimal measure of respect would seem to be in order. Not that personal attacks are OK in other cases. But if we're doing character critique, I wouldn't say he typically whines a lot. He does occasionally come across as bitter and self-indulgent on his blog however. I have to say that in this example, he either doesn't do a good job of explaining what's so horrible about "the button problem", or it is indeed an instance where walking out on the conference call was probably the kindest thing Mayer could have done. A lot of us would probably have either laughed or yelled at him. On the other hand, I can see how the intent of making the Blog This! button software-agnostic was ahead of its time. I certainly wish there had been more of that, it would have led to a different set of rules for web apps as they are today. But I guess (or rather: hope) the point where the web globally recognizes the value and spirit of openness is still in the future.
- jerf 13y ago"On the other hand, I can see how the intent of making the Blog This! button software-agnostic was ahead of its time." At the risk of putting words in his mouth, I imagine part of his frustration is probably that making it software-dependent was a regression. There was already a budding ecosystem of blog-system-agnostic authoring tools, building off protocols he'd had a significant hand in, and while the protocol as it stood at the time[1] was probably going to require a version 2 at some point, it really wasn't that hard to make things like that very cross-platform. Even now from what I can see, there's a lot of overlap between the various platforms, and with the addition of some ability to upload images and other media into a rich text blog post you could probably catch >99.9% of blog posts made today across all the popular blogging platforms. I still think the blogging world may yet rise again as the centralization meets the end it always does, but when that happens it will be recapitulating development that has largely already occurred, ten+ years ago. (And if history is any guide, it will be from scratch and with loud acclamations about how innovative it all is.) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaWeblog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaWeblog
- KirinDave 13y agoI'm not sure how we're currently not in a golden age of self-published content. The idea that we're only there when we have some sort of meta-distributed protocol is a pretty big implicit value judgment.
- SeanDav 13y agoYou missed the point completely in order to make some stupid personal attack, as did everybody that upvoted you. The point of the article is about not trusting anything an acquiring company says, because they will say anything in order to get the deal. The other stuff was just some colour.
- papsosouid 13y ago>You missed the point completely in order to make some stupid personal attack To be fair, the blog post in question spends the first half of its content avoiding the point completely in order to make some stupid personal attack. When the author misses his own point, it can be hard for readers not to do the same.
- danilocampos 13y agoI know what you're saying, but I dismiss it for two reasons: First, if Winer wants to get link-baity by piggybacking someone in the news, let's give some scrutiny to the relevance of that case. This is pretty silly-sounding stuff and I'm inclined to come down pretty firmly on Mayer's side by his account. My job is to be willing to be persuaded – not to be a pushover to any opinion. It's the author's job to persuade – and to decide when name dropping is more trouble than it's worth. The other reason: I'm not going to clap when someone makes an entirely self-evident point for the sole purpose of attaching their name to someone newsworthy.
- davewiner 13y agoIf you want to stop something you think is linkbait, be smart, don't link to it.
- davewiner 13y agoI'm not familiar with your great work. Please elaborate.
- wendall911 13y agoThis is a great comment for perspective. I rarely comment on anything. The reason is that HN is full of folks who spend all day posting about issues that they've yet to contribute even something small, let alone something of significance in the topic area they pretend to be an "expert". I'll share a personal example. I've not been a fan of your approach to RSS in the past. I was especially frustrated when developing a parser and having a fragmented landscape because of RSS 2.0, and other developers lack of understanding that your blog didn't represent a standards body. However, I never publicly complained about it because I understand why it happened, so I just shut my mouth and get back to making my parser work. At the time, even now, publicly complaining about your contributions would be incredibly disrespectful to your body of work. The only way I would ever be in any position of criticism is if I had a similar body of work to compare. I didn't then, and I sure don't now, so I just respectfully keep my mouth shut and work on what I can contribute.
- dgesang 13y agoWriting a RSS parser is horrible - been there, done that. Everyone who had to go through that hell has my deepest compassion!
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- guelo 13y agoGrade school level name calling is not appropriate for HN. We expect better discussion here.
- whyleyc 13y ago"This is how you squander your capital" Actually you squander your capital by resulting to pointless name-calling and dismissing the arguments of someone who actually has an interesting perspective to offer beyond the slavish, wide-eyed, youth-obsessed tech press.
- danilocampos 13y agoWiner writes "Back then Google cared a little about what I thought." Suggesting that today they don't. Why? Perhaps because trivialities like a button on the Google toolbar were made to occupy the time of someone whose hourly value would eventually be measured in four or more figures. So while I get what you're saying – honest, public eye-rolling about the petulance of this writing may one day come at some cost to me – the situations aren't remotely the same. That said, I hold the greatest respect for people who can offer valid criticism, no matter how colorful, and I welcome it from anyone, regardless of my perceptions of their "contributions." I suspect that anyone who wouldn't share those values would be doing me a favor by not working with me anyway. I suspect we share the same contempt for the tech "press," feckless and craven as they are, but the headline story for this post is about someone kind of wasting someone else's time and that's not an interesting perspective at all, except as a cautionary tale.
- craigvn 13y agoHello young man. I assume you are young because you know nothing of the past. Previously the Google Toolbar was actually a big deal. Today it is irrelevant but that was not always the case. And when blogs were considered a cool thing by the tech press (long before TechCrunch) the BlogThis! button on the tool bar was a considerable feature. I also note on your blog (which 10 years ago you probably would have used the BlogThis! button on your Google Toolbar to write) you feature prominently a technology pioneered by Dave Winer.
- revelation 13y agoI thought the Google Toolbar was only a big deal because it showed a random PageRank number to SEO sleazebags.
- damoncali 13y agoMaking fun of a man's name is not called for - lets be better than that.