The Results (Was RE: ASN.1 and XML)

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

Al, good buddy, email compatriot, funky fellow on other side of big pond,
let's 
go back a few years.  "All you need is love... dah dah dahdahdah"... no not 
that far back.  That's the Sixties. Great music; too much dieing.  

Let's go back to say... 1989.  What was happening?  

Most of us here on this list were sitting behind big scary 
walls.  Some of the walls, particularly for those of us with .us or .ru 
extensions, had very big very scary guns on them.  To have a conversation, 
we had to get a visa, get a briefing, get a debriefing.  We had to get 
on an airplane; stay in bad hotels, eat rotten food made by British chefs. 
Some of us couldn't get out at all.  Some died trying.

We lived in fear of what we didn't understand and didn't understand we 
were afraid of.  We were afraid of dieing in one big orgy of hot
thermonuclear 
bean dip without ever having had the chance to get acquainted with the
Doritos.

What has been happening since then?  Well, thanks to some kids 
hacking a bad design and a strange little protocol hacker under a steam pipe

figuring out how to hook up discarded weapons stuff left laying around 
by the guys on the walls with the big scary guns,  
starting in about 1993, we started having the biggest 
party line conversation in history. 

Nothing like it had ever happened. 

Down came the walls.  No starship, no soldiers marching into town and
stamping people with 
stars, or lining them up against the wall for their opinions, no nuclear
blowout, 
no huge revolution. Just people talking, little people, big people, lots of
people all talking 
about whatever was on their minds, able to find other people with the same 
things on their minds, not American, not Russian, not even British, just
people.

I call that results.  I call that a dammed freakin' miracle.   We got
together. 

Make's an old hippie happy to be here. Peace.

As for making it a better place to converse, well, that is why we are on
this particular 
party line.  If ASN.1 has ideas to make it better, bring 'em on.  If the
idea is 
to replace the phone, forget it.  Mammals are partying here and won't stop
to clean up 
the mess.  They like the mess.  They are messy mammals.

Come dance in the dirt!  It's ALLL Goood!

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard