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Tim Bray on Microsoft Office
jgeelan writes "The co-inventor of XML, Tim Bray, has been talking about the newly XML-enabled version of Microsoft Office, code-named 'Office 11' and tells XML-Journal that 'when the huge universe of MS Office documents becomes available for processing by any programmer with a Perl script and a bit of intelligence, all sorts of wonderful new things can be invented that you and I can't imagine.'"
Mod this up. Pretty insightful look at MS approach. The kernel level SQL part especially... look out for the dangerous bits of Long Horns, eh?
Good stuff.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Wow, it's funny how many grammar and spelling mistakes I can make per second this early in the morning.
11*43+456^2
MEEP! Wrong! Phoenix Tech was first to license their reverse-engineered BIOS, opening up the PC-clone market.
I don't believe that's what he meant. When the PC was originally released you could buy the Technical Reference Manual (I've got one around here someplace) for a nominal fee. It thoroughly explained the architecture of the PC, and had a complete BIOS function call reference. You didn't necessarily have to "reverse engineer" anything; just duplicate the functionality from the documentation. The significance of clone BIOS's (and Compaq was first, by the way, not Pheonix) was that they used a "clean room" approach to make sure that there was no infringement on IBM's binaries. You could do no such thing with Apple... the lone Apple ][ clone, Franklin, actually used a bit-for-bit copy of Apples BIOS, (or at least portions thereof) which promptly got them sued out of the market.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
I say "bequiet."