I just saw the movie AI on HBO. This had the makings over being one of my favorite movies of all time but just like everyone else I believe the movie went on for twenty or thirty minutes too long. It felt like a nine year old was asked to tack on a "happy ending" to an already finished work that had originally been a moving and somewhat melancholy look at what makes us human.

More below on Mark Pilgrim's response to my thoughts on semantic markup and his usage of the <cite> tag plus a review of 3 news aggregators.

Poll: What Means The World to You?

Various thoughts on Mark Pilgrim's neat trick with the <cite> tag, Macintosh addicts, foreign language translations of my articles and Buffy the Vampire Slayer on UPN.

But first, Pud's InternalMemos.com sure picked up some grinches this holiday season. The biggest grinch-like memo is this one which includes the gem

I expect a return email from all the staff to tell me if they can step up and make the commitment to DO EVERYTHING IT TAKES, INCLUDING POSTPONING DECEMBER VACATIONS ... I also need to know if you will volunteer to be here the week of December 23-27 and Dec. 30-Jan. 4.

Now more than ever, the [CompanyName] team must have the start-up/do whatever it takes mentality. If any of you are not of that mentality anymore, have personal/family issues that prohibit you from making the full commitment, please tell me that as well and I will do whatever I can to assist you to find a job outside of [CompanyName].

I just noticed via Slashdot that it is now possible to become an official card carrying member of the dirty GNU Hippie Society. If this is your scene I'm sure joining would skyrocket your cred amongst the Linux geek pack in the same way a three or four digit Slashdot ID used to awe me when I was in college. Nothing attracts the chicks like a business card that's also a fully bootable Linux distro. :)

Anyway, GNU isn't for me but the EFF on the other hand is worth every dollar donated. If you haven't joined and work in the software industry, you should.

Various random thoughts about stuff below.

I've been using my Toshiba Portege Tablet PC for a few days now and have a couple of thoughts about it which I'm sharing since Derath asked.

Noticed ChrisD on Slashdot posted a hoax about Sony settling a lawsuit with Nintendo $2.3 billion as a front page story. This seems a much bigger fuckup than the biweekly duplicate story posts. Also noticed they posted about the C|Net article about Office 11 XM which I talked about a few days ago. As usual people kept on posting the same joke over and over and over again.

Poll: Worst Slashdot Editor?

A couple of people have mentioned being interested in my notes from Don's XML 2002 keynote which has already been the cause of some speculation. Below is my summary of his presentation with my personal comments and opinions in italics.

Poll: Biggest Technology Hype Jobs of 2002?

In preparation for my changing job role and the amount of meetings I now attend I got to order a laptop on the Borg's dime. I ended up getting a Toshiba Portege 3500 Tablet PC. I've had it less than twenty four hours but so far I'm loving the form factor. It is hot. Using it in laptop mode one minute then transforming it into clipboard mode and using Word or Outlook with hand writing recognition is sweet. I am geeking out.

Below are thoughts on poor technology journalism coming from C|Net, moneybags arguments in technical discussions and the "we only hire the best" Borg mentality.

Poll: I'd like a _____ for Christmas.

Just stumbled on a weblog post about OO databases which struck a chord. The author seems enamored with OODBMSes and complains about lack of OO features in commercial RDBMS products even though XML features abound. A number of counterpoints below.

By the way, against my better judgement I saw Die Another Day which despite having one of the best opening sequences of any James Bond movie I've ever seen rapidly turned to crap. There is an entire 15 - 20 minute chunk involving a palace made of ice that should never have made it into the final script.

Just got back from XML 2002 on Thursday evening. Thoughts about the conference in general below. Also some amusing observations during dimsum with Joshua and Doug plus various links to laments about the current state of affairs in America.

I leave for XML 2002 this evening. I'm rather amused by the fact that whenever I've flown to Atlanta from Seattle or vice versa on my employer's dime I've always had to layover at some airport along the way and now that I'm going to Baltimore I'm going to have to layover at the Atlanta airport along the way. Well, there goes my impression that there were no direct ATL <-> SEA flights.

Followup thoughts to the IBM <-> Rational purchase, agreeing with Shelley Powers about Clay Shirkey's Social Software Summit and thoughts on interviewing for Microsoft.

Poll: Are you going back home for Christmas?

IBM is buying Rational. Wow. Couple that with their purchase of the consulting arm of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and buying Informix it looks like they've been on quite the acquisition binge. I wonder if this recent purchase means we'll start seeing more high quality Open Source UML tools for Java. That would be nice especially since I don't plan to buy a Java IDEs (Emacs is just fine, Thank you) but wouldn't mind a free yet high quality Java UML tool.

Thoughts below on why people should and do use XML plus some news from the C# team on what the story is for backwards compatibility and generics.

Poll: Favorite Looney Tunes Character?

It looks like I'll be at XML 2002 in Baltimore doing booth duty. The higherups kinda sprung this on me at the last minute but I don't mind given that I'll get a chance to actually meet all those folks from XML-DEV I'm always arguing with. With any luck I can get some books signed. :)

Looking at the schedule for XML 2002 it looks like there'll be a bunch of XML Schema and XQuery presentations which I'll attend. The only down side is that I'll probably have to be dressed in borg attire (MSFT polo T-shirt and khakis) and not my usual work attire of ghetto baggy jeans and expressive T-shirts like the one with the chicken humping the rabbit or the one with the little green man smoking a phat blunt. That's weak.

Links below to the equivalent of Edsgar Dijkstra's blog, thoughts on a review of my XML Schema article and all the stuff I forgot to mention on Monday.

Poll: Movie of the Year?

Don't really feel like long entries today. So I'm doing a Bob Abooey style diary with bulleted lists and all that. Thoughts below on undeserved Academy awards winners, Japanese fertility festivals, a mini-review of the new Harry Potter, rap battles, Roger Moore's James Bong vs. Pierce Brosnan's and a call for reviewers.

Poll: How many serious romantic relationships have you been in?