RE: Steve Ballmer is cracking up

[Sean McGrath <sean.mcgrath@propylon.com>]

At 08:41 26/06/2001 -0500, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>Could be he simply knows something others don't
>and is excited about it.  Could be...

Here is what I think: Total buy-in to XML makes perfect sense
as the real lock-in potential is further up the food chain. I am seeing a 
worrying
amount of glib "We use XML therefore ZZZ is an open, standards compliant
system" from vendors.

In a world where XML is the new ASCII, this is tantamount to saying
(for example) "We use ASCII therefore RTF is an open, standards
compliant system".

Its not just Microsoft of course. I just use RTF as an illustrative
example.

I used to think that big guys would play embrace and extend with
their XML parsers but this was very stupid of me. The only game in
town is to fall over yourself in your efforts to conform to the
W3C standards because a) the real money is further up the food
chain and b) beaming about your standards compliance deflects
attention from where the real action is.

Sean