# Presentation: 073215

## PC Manager Meeting

- June 22, 2005

## Today

- Updates
- Next Meeting
- Security
- Meeting Maker Update
- This Month:
-  Everything You Wanted to Know About RSS But Were Afraid To Ask! – Dave Ritchie

## Next Meeting

- July 27th
- ??????

## Security

- MSSQL Critical Vulnerability
- Scanning now for blank/weak passwords. Will be scanning from off-site for MSSQL listeners on June 30.
-  Looking at blocking outbound SMTP
- Email routed through lab gateways
-  Discussing site-wide AV policy
- Cloned from Fermi Domain Policy
-  NIMI is now rolled out

## Security

- TIssue Announcement:
- From Randy Reitz’s email:
-   Starting today (Monday 6/20), vulnerabilities (both critical and non-  critical) found by the vulnerability scanner (VScan) will be tracked using TIssue.
- _[https://nimisrva.fnal.gov:8443](https://nimisrva.fnal.gov:8443/)_
- Sysadmin Roundtable July 7th:
- Hacking web sites

## Meeting Maker Update

- Archive Server
- _[http://meetingmaker-archive.fnal.gov](http://meetingmaker-archive.fnal.gov/)_
- June 30th, 2005 – We will only keep 2 years worth of data on the Meeting Maker Server
- Rollover in early January every year after that.
- 2005: MM1998-2003 archive created
- 2006: MM2004 archive created
- LDAP Gateway
- All user accounts now set to email usernames
- Server still being purchased

## Main Topic

- Everything You Wanted to Know About RSS But Were Afraid To Ask! – Dave Ritchie
- CD-doc-894 v2

## RSS – It’s Genesis

- RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”
- Think of a news agency syndicate that:
- collects articles from reporters and
- distributes them to a number of newspapers for publication simultaneously.

## RSS – a Bit of History

- Originally, RSS was the way a web publisher provided individually tailored web pages (e.g., “My Netscape”) with news on topics of interest (i.e., Sports)
- Now, people just use RSS directly via stand-alone RSS readers

## RSS – How It Looks

- You define “newsfeeds” to RSS reader
- RSS reader receives headlines from the newsfeeds
- RSS reader shows them in pop-up window
- You click on a headline of interest
- RSS reader displays the lead paragraph
- You click further and are taken to the entire article on feed provider’s web site

## RSS – How It Really Is

- The RSS reader application on your computer periodically queries an XML file specific to a news feed located on a web site
- If a headline has been added to the XML file since it last looked, it gets the info and displays it in some format as defined by the RSS reader

## RSS – Some Possible Readers

*RSS Reader -- *_*[http://](http://www.rssreader.com/)*__*[www.rssreader.com](http://www.rssreader.com/)*__*[/](http://www.rssreader.com/)*__[ ](http://www.rssreader.com/)_(Windows .NET)* *[This is the one I prefer.]
*Sharp -- *_*[http://](http://www.sharpreader.net/)*__*[www.sharpreader.net](http://www.sharpreader.net/)*__*[/](http://www.sharpreader.net/)*_
*Awasu --  *_*[http://](http://www.awasu.com/)*__*[www.awasu.com](http://www.awasu.com/)*__*[/](http://www.awasu.com/)*__[ ](http://www.awasu.com/)_(Windows)
*Bloglines -- *_*[http://](http://bloglines.com/)*__*[bloglines.com](http://bloglines.com/)*__*[/](http://bloglines.com/)*__[ ](http://bloglines.com/)_(All OS, browser-based)
*NetNewsWire -- *_*[http://](http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/)*__*[ranchero.com/netnewswire](http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/)*__*[/](http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/)*__[ ](http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/)_*(Mac OS X) *

## RSS – Some Possible Readers (cont’d)

- RSS reader capability is also being integrated directly into web browsers
- Opera, Firefox...
- Expect to see it in Netscape and IE
- My preference is for the separate stand-alone RSS Reader because it lets me turn it off so I don’t get distracted.

## RSS – Some details

- RSS and XML get blurred together
- You will see references to both:
- In many cases, these are two icons for the same thing. Really, though, RSS is just a specific use of XML to tag and retrieve text

## RSS – Ways to Generate Headlines and Stories

- Create (and/or update) an XML file on your web site in the appropriate XML format as specified by the RSS standards
- Any way to do this will work – bizarre things come to mind:
- a FORTRAN (gasp!) analysis program updating an XML file with info.
- Physicists worldwide using RSS readers to track the program’s analysis progress

## RSS – Even More Bizarre Ways to Generate Headlines and “Stories”

- We have been thinking of the “headlines” and “news stories” as text but...
- The news stories could be audio or other formats.
- This is how audio from blog-casting or pod-casting is distributed. The news story is an audio file that is downloaded into an iPod for listening on the morning jog.

## RSS – More Mundane Ways to Generate Headlines and Stories

- Listserv has recently provided a way to see via RSS the e-mail sent to the list (CAUTION: unsupported, beta feature)
- Allows for username and password (but transmitted in the clear)
- A little confusing because it looks like a listserv news item within an RSS story (which of course it is)
- _[http://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?RSS&L=cd-computer-room-planning](http://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?RSS&L=cd-computer-room-planning)_

## Of what use is a newborn baby?

- Or, RSS, for that matter...
- It’s a good way to keep stuff you are mildly interested in out of your e-mail
- It dangles topics before your mildly interested readers (see above) and attracts them back to your web site

## Evidence For Attracting Visitors

- Winifred Haun & Dancers web site
- _[http://www.WinifredHaun.org/](http://www.winifredhaun.org/)_
- RSS feed began in Jan.; see hits go up after that (green bars)
- http://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/WHDemaillist/rss

## A Variety of Feeds

- Computer Room Planning
- http://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?RSS&L=cd-computer-room-planning
- Fermilab Preprints
- http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/rss?dadd=tod+or+yes+and+r+fermilab
- The New York Times Science Section
- http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Science.xml
- Scripting News
- http://www.scripting.com/rss.xml
- SlashDot
- http://slashdot.org/rss/slashdot.rss

## RSS Further Info

- Brookhaven National Laboratory has one of the more concise explanations of RSS:
- http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/rss-faq.asp
- Search for RSS in Google to find newsfeeds of interest
- Examine web sites entirely devoted to cataloging RSS feeds:
- http://www.syndic8.com

## RSS Discussion

- Be careful about setting too fast a poll rate on your RSS reader. Security s/w may set a block.
- Emphasize that RSS way of obtaining Listserv postings is an unsupported beta release and may therefore change.
- The link attached to an XML or RSS indication may take you to a screen of XML.
- If so, that link is the one that should be entered as the “newsfeed” address in your RSS reader.
- Instead of clicking on it, copy the link (Right Click in Windows), bring up your RSS reader, define a new newsfeed and paste the link into the news feed as the feed address

## Questions???