Roanoke actually wasn't funded by a corporation. Sir Walter Raleigh was given a charter by the Crown to settle Roanoke using only his own funds. (It failed miserably, as you pointed out.)
Jamestown was funded by a corporation since, at the time, there weren't many people in England who had the money to finance a colony by themselves. And Jamestown certainly had its share of problems. The managers of the corporation stayed in England to run things while the colonists came to Virginia (just like point 1). Does the rule in absentia have anything to do with their troubles? Hard to say. It's a good possibility, at least.
The founders of Plymouth, on the other hand, were able to ensure that their corporation's managers (and their charter) came with them to the New World. So they were able to prevent (for the most part) interference from England.
As far as I can tell, XML config files would not give you any benefits as far as actually reading config files (ie, efficiency). The true benefit comes from (ideally, of course) having all of your applications store their configurations in a centralized place and in one format. This would allow the user to have one centralized configuration tool to change the settings for every application on the box (like MS's attempts with their Management Console.)
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Jamestown was funded by a corporation since, at the time, there weren't many people in England who had the money to finance a colony by themselves. And Jamestown certainly had its share of problems. The managers of the corporation stayed in England to run things while the colonists came to Virginia (just like point 1). Does the rule in absentia have anything to do with their troubles? Hard to say. It's a good possibility, at least.
The founders of Plymouth, on the other hand, were able to ensure that their corporation's managers (and their charter) came with them to the New World. So they were able to prevent (for the most part) interference from England.
belette
As far as I can tell, XML config files would not give you any benefits as far as actually reading config files (ie, efficiency). The true benefit comes from (ideally, of course) having all of your applications store their configurations in a centralized place and in one format. This would allow the user to have one centralized configuration tool to change the settings for every application on the box (like MS's attempts with their Management Console.)
belette