Dim Sum
Conversations
It's always fun talking to Doug and Joshua. Last
Sunday's conversation full of amusing anecdotes
such as stories of college frat parties with
garbage cans full of punch spiked with
Everclear. Observations about the logical
inconsistenies in human belief systems were rife.
We were particularly amused by the fact that the
political left in the US is pro-abortion and
anti-death penalty while the political right is
anti-abortion and pro-death penalty. One would
think that either side's beliefs would be based on
the sacredness instead of the inconsistent "it's OK
to kill unborn babies but not adults" versus
"killing adults is OK but don't you dare harm
unborn babies".
We also talked a bunch about religion, especially
Christianity/Judaism, as a meme which reminded me
of similar ideas described in
Snow Crash. It's always interesting to talk to
people and realize that your observations that you
considered private or unique were shared by others.
We seemed to have the same opinions on the lack of
mention of
Lilith in modern religion.
Joshua's seen the new Bond and he's given me a
good reason why I'm definitely not going to see it.
Two words;
invisible car.
#
XML
2002
Just got back from
XML 2002 and left with a number of
impressions.- IBM, Oracle, Sun and
even XML Spy did not have booths.
- I never encountered
anyone from the Press besides Edd Dumbill, editor
of XML.com, but
given that he was at the O'Reilly booth I'm not
sure that counts.
- Lots of sessions on
Semantic Web technologies (RDF, DAML + OIL,
WebOnt, Topic Maps, etc) but very few on XML Web
Services.
- Tim Bray's keynote was
well received but I can't take it seriously given
that he actually gave props to
blog browsers at the end of it. Creating
custom browsers for a specific XML format instead
of simply reusing web browsers and using style
sheets (XML + CSS or XSLT) is the kind of thing
I'd expect college kids itching to code to do and
not something espoused by a member of the W3C
Technical Architecture Group.
- The
XML features of Office 11 knocked 'em dead.
There was always a crowd around the Word 11 booth
and always someone a few folks gawking at XDocs
and Excel 11. In the words of Paul Prescod,
"This is by far the most open and
standards-compliant version of MS Office in
history."
I took a bunch of notes on Don's XML 2002 keynote
and considered posting but realized that would take
longer than I thought. If you are interested in Don
Box's XML 2002 keynote, post or email me and if
enough people care then I'll dig up my notes and
write 'em up.
#Laments on
America
I've been stumbling across various rants about the
current socio-economic and political situation in
America. I've linked to my favorite three below
- Get
Your War On - "When A Tree Falls In The
Forest And It's The Fourth Ammendment, Does It
Make A Sound?"
-
Ten Things That Are The Law In America Today
- "But the saddest and most telling answer is:
They were all the product of the 104th Congress.
Every one of the horrors above was imposed upon
you by the Congress of the Republican-
Revolution-the Congress that pledged to 'get
government off your back.'"
-
How To Ruin American Enterprise - "Tax the
fruits of labor many times: First tax it as
income. Then tax it as real or personal property.
Then tax it as capital gains. Then tax it again,
at a staggeringly high level, at death. This way,
Americans are taught that only fools save, "
#