I'm not sure it is possible to have a monopoly on something on the internet. There is *no* penalty for using other products.
While that's certainly true for search engines, it's a whole other ballgame when customers create a lot of data bound to the service (MySpace, del.icio.us, Flickr). Geeks have come to expect high portability of web-based data, but not everyone plays nice. That's when it really costs.
How many 10^N hours are lost each year in the U.S. alone because of a trivial issue like this?
Consider a supermarket queue with 10 persons in line for each counter. If each person could save 1 second fetching the correct currency with accessible notes, every single person in the queue saves 10 seconds that day.
As any programmer knows, a super-efficient operation which is executed 100 million times is no longer fast.
Off-topic, but the manuals are totally utter bug-f###. Trivial examples, no examples, arcane structure (The web is not a friggin' book), and very few links to related information. They would do good to change the manuals when they are seriously lacking, but I guess that goes against the "buy lotsa books" mantra of old dinosaur companies.
Dunno where I read about it a few years back, but this was anticipated as "Little Brother", the situation where anyone can "spy" on just about anyone, in power or not, and publish their findings for literally the world to see. An enormously interesting situation, which can lead to some powerful grassroot influence on big business / politics.
Four words: Encrypted storage / version control. Secure access everywhere (providing you have Internet access or checked out a copy before leaving it).
In Windows, you can setup Alt-Shift-Number to change to a different keyboard. I've used three different ones (Dvorak, US English, and Norwegian) for three years, no problem.
In Linux, you can even use the otherwise useless Caps Lock to rotate layouts.
The Optimus keyboard should be another stepping-stone in making non-English layouts a whole lot more mainstream.
The XML in the post you referred to is bad for several reasons:
Not indented or color coded (any proper editor will do this for you). Because of this, you're missing lots of structural information.
The information could have been represented with a lot less XML. E.g., you could have removed <relationships>, and just added that as an attribute on <participants>
Creating nested elements (type/demeanour (sic)) when there's only one piece of information is unnecessary.
You don't need @type when you're using namespaces.
The data lives in a context, depending on the problem you're solving. That data should not be part of your XML.
Parsing XML is a whole lot easier than HTML and SGML, because it is less forgiving. At the same time, it's flexible enough to contain just about any information which you could contain in both the others.
Nothing has to "drive" the parser. Modern programming languages support XML very nicely. In any case, if you got "complicated" XML, it sounds like more of a design problem than anything else. The result always depends on both the tool and the user.
Sure variable_name=value is easy to read, but these kinds of files have their own problems:
Trying to define relationships between variables (e.g., this variable depends on that one being defined, this value should always be less than that one) makes for messy manuals or guessing games. The tree structure of XML can take care of that.
There are a huge number of formats like these, which differ subtly in their use of quotes, valid names, encodings, escape characters, line endings, single/multiple line comments, etc.
Nothing is a silver bullet. Use whatever fits the problem. It just so happens that XML fits a lot of problems, is supported by a lot of mature tools, and is generally a good compromise between readability, parseability, size, and information structure. You need more structure? Use a database. No structure? Use a plain text file. You need small size? Use gzipped whatever.
Isn't all data interchanged? From client to server, from blogger to browser, from developer to developer, etc. Any data which is not interchanged is either useless or forgotten. And XML has shown its strength in all these areas: Ease of human and computer parsing.
Maybe he was thinking about IT culture. XML sure has gotten rid of a lot of maintenance problems with regard to computer parsed files. Don't put the format description and instructions in a manual; blend it with the data!
Anyway, fundamental technological changes always have some impact on the rest of society. GUIs made computers accessible outside of academic circles, the Internet made the world talk, and using XML can be a small step towards more people understanding your data the same way you understand it.
Re:1% by number of pages, 99% by bandwidth consume
on
Internet Only 1% Porn
·
· Score: 1
Well, I tried submitting a paper which claimed to have solved P=NP (via traveling salesman). Dunno if the editors read it, analyzed it, and came to the same conclusions as the follow-up, but I thought it was damn interesting nerd material.
I've always thought IT security would be a massive challenge for any medium/large company, due to the simple fact that crackers are not geographically limited, like thieves. That's one of the things any manager should know.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless your neighbor is a WoW druid, that is!
Unless you're making
such an insightful comment
that the monkeys-in-pants
staring up at you
on your pedestal of intelligence
will have to be fed the information
bite-wise for their brains
not to explode.
While that's certainly true for search engines, it's a whole other ballgame when customers create a lot of data bound to the service (MySpace, del.icio.us, Flickr). Geeks have come to expect high portability of web-based data, but not everyone plays nice. That's when it really costs.
*Ticks off another spelling of "definitely"*
definativly: That which is completely certain for native inhabitants. See "xenophobia".
How many 10^N hours are lost each year in the U.S. alone because of a trivial issue like this?
Consider a supermarket queue with 10 persons in line for each counter. If each person could save 1 second fetching the correct currency with accessible notes, every single person in the queue saves 10 seconds that day.
As any programmer knows, a super-efficient operation which is executed 100 million times is no longer fast.
Off-topic, but the manuals are totally utter bug-f###. Trivial examples, no examples, arcane structure (The web is not a friggin' book), and very few links to related information. They would do good to change the manuals when they are seriously lacking, but I guess that goes against the "buy lotsa books" mantra of old dinosaur companies.
</rant>
And we will. Advances in science and technology have steadily created more jobs than the ones which have been made obsolete by them.
Dunno where I read about it a few years back, but this was anticipated as "Little Brother", the situation where anyone can "spy" on just about anyone, in power or not, and publish their findings for literally the world to see. An enormously interesting situation, which can lead to some powerful grassroot influence on big business / politics.
How's this for size? ATLAS calorimeter, the tunnel, one of the tubes, the "crab", the hole, and the cavern. Bonus: They do have retina scanners!
Four words: Encrypted storage / version control. Secure access everywhere (providing you have Internet access or checked out a copy before leaving it).
In Windows, you can setup Alt-Shift-Number to change to a different keyboard. I've used three different ones (Dvorak, US English, and Norwegian) for three years, no problem.
In Linux, you can even use the otherwise useless Caps Lock to rotate layouts.
The Optimus keyboard should be another stepping-stone in making non-English layouts a whole lot more mainstream.
Tonk, tonk, tonk, tonk, tonk, tonk, tonk!
"Aw dammit, I forgot to catch a systemOutOfMemory error!"
*Fetches another rock*
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Java will be forgotten by history.
And here are the contestants...
Leonardo da Vinci, for not being there when his inventions were brought to life.
Carl Barks, since his art still bears the name of his boss.
Calvin and Hobbes, still fighting over who has the title of Super Master Chief of G.R.O.S.S.
J.R.R. Tolkien, for seeing his work dumbed down.
Michael Faraday, for obvious reasons.
Please, please, this time. Please let /. users be more constructive.
The XML in the post you referred to is bad for several reasons:
Parsing XML is a whole lot easier than HTML and SGML, because it is less forgiving. At the same time, it's flexible enough to contain just about any information which you could contain in both the others.
Nothing has to "drive" the parser. Modern programming languages support XML very nicely. In any case, if you got "complicated" XML, it sounds like more of a design problem than anything else. The result always depends on both the tool and the user.
Sure variable_name=value is easy to read, but these kinds of files have their own problems:
Nothing is a silver bullet. Use whatever fits the problem. It just so happens that XML fits a lot of problems, is supported by a lot of mature tools, and is generally a good compromise between readability, parseability, size, and information structure. You need more structure? Use a database. No structure? Use a plain text file. You need small size? Use gzipped whatever.
Isn't all data interchanged? From client to server, from blogger to browser, from developer to developer, etc. Any data which is not interchanged is either useless or forgotten. And XML has shown its strength in all these areas: Ease of human and computer parsing.
Maybe he was thinking about IT culture. XML sure has gotten rid of a lot of maintenance problems with regard to computer parsed files. Don't put the format description and instructions in a manual; blend it with the data!
Anyway, fundamental technological changes always have some impact on the rest of society. GUIs made computers accessible outside of academic circles, the Internet made the world talk, and using XML can be a small step towards more people understanding your data the same way you understand it.
"+9, Funny" on your own? Respect!
Flashback: "You don't actually think they spend $20,000 on a hammer, $30,000 on a toilet seat do you?"
Am I allowed to use my binary pencil?
Allright, done. Now, should I tag them "todo", "done", "fun", or maybe set it "for" somebody to check the efficiency of foreign law enforcement?
Hmm, that's del.icio.us material. Oh well, I'm not planning on going to the U* this decade anyway.
Who said that? RMS? Linus? Data? HAL?
Well, I tried submitting a paper which claimed to have solved P=NP (via traveling salesman). Dunno if the editors read it, analyzed it, and came to the same conclusions as the follow-up, but I thought it was damn interesting nerd material.
I've always thought IT security would be a massive challenge for any medium/large company, due to the simple fact that crackers are not geographically limited, like thieves. That's one of the things any manager should know.