Re: [xml-dev] XML has arrived

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>]

At 2006-11-01 13:15 +0000, Joe Fawcett wrote:
>All
>
>We have in the UK a quiz program named 
>"University Challenge" whereby student teams 
>compete over a number of rounds for a token prize.
>
>The questions are normally fairly technical, 
>such as chemical valencies, or art and 
>literature, such as identifying classical music.
>
>This week's episode had a question on XML, can't 
>remember verbatim but something like:
>What XML formatted files are used on web sites 
>to provide machine readable content summaries 
>and are often visuaally marked with an orange box?
>
>The answer, of course, was RSS.
>
>It was great to hear a question related to a 
>topic that dominates my professional life, the 
>first time I've seen something like that on popular television.
>
>Felt I had to share this so sorry if you think it's off-topic.
>
>Regards
>
>Joe

During the week of September 19, XML and Web 2.0 
came up on two days of a week-long story in a 
favourite comic strip called "FoxTrot" syndicated 
in our city's newspaper ... I had a similar 
reaction of being pleased of its mainstream exposure.

Strip 1:

  Panel 1:
    Sister: "Mom says you're designing a web page for school"
    Brother: "Yup"

  Panel 2:
    Brother: "and not just any web page, but the ultimate web page"

  Panel 3:
    Brother: "I'm using every tool in the box.  HTML... XHTML...
              CSS... XML... SOAP... AJAX... FLASH... PERL...
              JAVASCRIPT... you name it.

  Panel 4:
    Sister: "What's the page going to look like?"
    Brother: "I'll figure that out when I'm done."


Unfortunately the paper with the second strip got 
thrown out before I could save it, but I think it 
was the last strip of the series and went along the lines of:

Strip 2:

   Brother:  "There, I'm done the school news web page and I used Web 2.0"
   Sister:  "But the screen is blank!"
   Brother:  "Well, duh, you have to type the news in before you can read it!"
   Sister:  (some humourous remark about the acceptance of having to do this)

I regret not cutting that one out before it was 
tossed.  I thought it was very telling.  The 
artist spins very geeky stuff to a mainstream 
audience.  I've just looked through various comic 
archives and the access to old strips does not go that far back.

. . . . . . . . . . . . Ken


--
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G. Ken Holman                 mailto:gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com
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