Re: Steve Ballmer is cracking up

[Al Snell <alaric@alaric-snell.com>]

On Fri, 22 Jun 2001, XML Everywhere wrote:

> After many intense battles, the
> XML proponents won.  I wonder why
> that is... did XML make software less
> brittle, easier to prototype, easier to
> integrate, ...

Uhoh! Myths of XML again!

> I suspect it's all of these
> things and more.  Did it matter that XML is
> 'open' .. I'm sure Microsoft didn't
> care much about openness at the beginning,
> but now I think they understand that
> openness is a necessary evil,
> if only to keep their thousands of
> programmers in line.

And again!

> http://fuckedcompany.com

Tee hee :-)

> I'm sure most of you out there
> are reading this email on Windows.

I'm glad to say that no Windows machines were inolved in the making of
this reply. My mail servers run NetBSD, and I run pine and IMP from a
NetBSD box. I am accessing it from a FreeBSD machine at work.

I'm lucky to not be forced to use Windows for my work. I have a win 98
machine - for playing Half Life!

> XML or not, Microsoft wins.  XML will
> no doubt help them get to where
> they want to go.  Probably faster
> than their competition.

Possibly. Although I don't think XML itself has done much good for the
software industry, the fact that people are thinking about data
interchange again is a good thing that leads to more flexible modular
programming models (a cause I champion :-)

ABS

-- 
                               Alaric B. Snell
 http://www.alaric-snell.com/  http://RFC.net/  http://www.warhead.org.uk/
   Any sufficiently advanced technology can be emulated in software