IE7 can't handle basic HTTP authentication with RSS

So, it turns out that rather than take advantage of the IE codebase that can already handle HTTP authentication (one of the most basic methods of authentication in the wonderful world-wide web), Microsoft insisted that IE7 use their new RSS "platform" instead.

So not only did Microsoft reinvent their own fucking wheel, but they did it so badly that they don't support part of the HTTP spec from 1999. How much time and money do you suppose Microsoft fucking burned to create this sorry-ass "platform" for reading RSS? Just about every language out there already has an API to deal with XML (and ATOM, which the "platform" simply translates into broken RSS) and they insisted on creating their own. Then, unsurprisingly, they fucked up part of the core technology that their browser has supported for years.

Now, you can preview a feed that uses HTTP authentication in IE7 just fine. Even a browser as fucked up as IE7 supports HTTP authentication. The feed then renders in the browser, since it has its own ways of parsing and displaying RSS. Once you try subscribing to the feed, remember...subscribing in IE7, it leaves the browser itself and then the "platform" takes over. Because of this, any HTTP authentication you've already passed using IE means shit at this point. Another application has taken things over, and it doesn't know a fucking thing about HTTP authentication.

Let me summarize this, just in case anyone got fucking lost on the way through that last paragraph: IE7 does not support RSS, it uses Microsoft's RSS platform. Microsoft's RSS platform, which has its sole purpose of retrieving markup over HTTP, does not support HTTP.

I think someone in Microsoft either has a fantastic sense of humor, or Microsoft just can't fucking understand this new "internet" shit people keep shoving at it.