Re: Collection paging section usefulness

As I said at first, my compliments to everyone who has brought this spec to 
this point, it is really impressive.  What I have done amounts only to tying 
up the loose ends I found in the draft specs and the discussion threads here, 
I know well how beneficial a fresh pair of eyes is on a problem.  What I 
suggest comes straight from being up to my elbows in an implementation as we 
speak.  Presenting the group with an alternative solution is all part of the 
open, scientific-method-like process of IETF specs.  Consensus cannot be 
achieved without first exploring plausible alternatives.  I am sorry if my 
blatant red-flagging of this protocol seems disresepectful but I assure you 
I would not have de-lurked and exposed myself to the possibility of someone 
like Dr. Fielding stopping me in my tracks with one paragraph if I didn't 
think it was imperative.

And that viewpoint is coming from someone who has been avidly reading and 
implementing IETF and w3c specs since 1993 without ever previously de-lurking.

My first browser was Mosaic (remember when everyone called the web that) beta 
downloaded over my CompuServe account so that I could learn how to build 
standalone websites in the months I was also reading RFCs learning how to 
deploy an ISP, of which I owned and operated the first between Denver, Salt 
Lake City and Cheyenne.  Being many tiers further down the ISP chain than I 
would prefer over the years has taught me that the most important things are 
keeping track of every last byte going out from my servers, and keeping as 
much of my enterprise online via cacheing for as long as possible in the 
event of a loss of connectivity at the origin server -- no longer a problem 
with server collocation, but back in the day...

So yeah, I may be Joe Nobody from Podunk, CO but I am more of an authority on 
issues of which I choose to speak than I am a noob speaking out of place.

-EJB

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Henry Story [mailto:henry.story-34e3GNjADZTR7s880joybQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
>Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2006 06:19 AM
>To: eric-MkmoNbc1SAncr/OS1auqaA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Cc: atom-protocol-O6w3ZxSwtmQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: Re: Collection paging section usefulness
>
>On 17 Aug 2006, at 15:08, Eric J. Bowman wrote:
>> Why does it have to be complex?  Let's not call it a "search  
>> endpoint", come
>> to think of it, let's call it a "query endpoint".
>
>I think you have not been on a group such as this long enough to  
>understand that even the simplest thing can end up being a lot more  
>complicated than you may have initially thought it was. You may think  
>writing a feed format would be simple. But it took close to 3 years  
>and that was starting from a well known base of all the RSS versions  
>that came before.
>
>This is in part due to your having to come to a consensus. This means  
>convincing any one and everyone pretty much of what you want to do.  
>The more complex what you want to do is, the more difficult it will  
>be to convince people. So in the end it is easier to stick to what is  
>essential, ie: what everyone can agree with.
>
>Henry
>
>
>