XML and Aliens

"If SETI@home works, for example, we'll need libraries for communicating with aliens. Unless of course
they are sufficiently advanced that they already communicate in XML."

- Paul Graham, The Hundred Year Language

The quote is towards the end, but the entire essay is well worth a read

There is XML support, and there is XML support

Microsoft limits XML in Office 2003.

XML-compliance don't mean nowt unless the XML is *intended* for direct processing by software outside of the system that orginally created it.

WordML for example.

Forget Lord of the Rings. Forget Harry Potter. Forget Chicago. THIS is the movie you *must* see

A missive from Clyde Hatter informed me of this, "must see", movie event of the decade : The Technical Writer (2003).

How to run a sucessful website

Four rules

• Offload the work


• Aggregate, don't duplicate


• Zero beaurocracy means great speed


• Don't disscuss business

Python/XML stuff from the archives - assembled by Uche Ogbuji

Uche Ogbuji has assembled some stuff from the archives of Python's XML-SIG. I like Greg Stein's HTML-is-a-hierarch-of-objects approach which shows up the dual text/data structure nature of markup rather well.

Weapons of Math Destruction - Sarnoff, Metcalf and Reed. Laws of the hyperjungle

David Reed explains why the Internet makes a lot of existing business models choke on their cornflakes.