I didn't think that a columnist could surprise me with raw ignorance any longer, but I was wrong. Have a look at the lack of understanding on display here - eWeek's Jim Rapoza is utterly baffled by syndication and aggregators:

But after years of really trying to like RSS feeds, I'm finally waving the white flag. This is another technology that just isn't for me. (And, yes, I realize that some of you are reading this column after receiving it through an RSS feed.)

As I do with IM and cell phones, I think part of the problem is that feeds— while empowering in some ways -- also remove some of the user's independence. Once subscribed to a feed, you just keep getting it, whether you want that day's info or not. No matter how I get the feeds delivered, they eventually become noise on my desktop or even an actual nuisance that I'd rather not deal with. Feeds delivered through e-mail clients are the worst, as they eventually become associated with other e-mail nuisances, such as spam.

My adventures in RSS feeds have succeeded in making me really appreciate Web browsing. I've decided I much prefer to go to Web sites and blogs to see if there's new information I want to read that day. I just feel as if I have a lot more control that way, and, using the grouped bookmarks features in Mozilla and Firefox, I can quickly look at multiple similar sites.

It's actually hard to stumble across this level of ignorance without trying. It's one thing to dislike the potential overload from RSS - I tend to max out around 300 feeds, myself. But Rapoza just doesn't understand the basics. You get the data whether you want it or not? Which part of "unsubscribe" is too hard for this guy? In my aggregator, I select a feed, and then pick the "remove feed" menu option - bingo, no more data from that source.

Apparently, Rapoza thinks that Winer and Scoble are going to show up at his house and throttle him if he dares to unsubscribe. And they pay this guy to produce drivel like this...