Category: Uncategorized

Stop the XML hype, I want to get off. As editor of XML.com, I welcome the massive success XML has had. But things prized by the XML community — openness and interoperability — are getting swallowed up in a blaze of marketing hype. Is this the price of success, or something we can avoid? [Meerkat:… Continue reading Stop the XML hype, I want to get off

It's going to take a miracle and a lot of compromise for SOAP to coalesce into a single protocol that interops. We've never really gotten a clear picture of how Microsoft is using it, and they have not gotten a clear picture of how we're using it. Now that's not because our respective pieces of… Continue reading Scripting News

The true curse of bloatware? Maintainability! When reading a Joel Spolsky column, I’m always prepared to be enlightened and entertained. Well his newest is certainly entertaining, but I kept waiting for the explanation of why Excel is 146MB on disk, and he never got there (except to say they ship before optimizing for disk space).… Continue reading The true curse of bloatware? Maintainability!

Fast Company: “But Wait, You Promised …”. One of the promises of the new economy was that the customer would finally be in charge. We weren't supposed to need to call customer care — but if we did, then someone would take our call quickly. Everyone believes in delighting the customer. [Tomalak's Realm] I had… Continue reading “But Wait, You Promised …”

MIT Technology Review: Remembrance of Things Past. Simson Garfinkel. And yet more than three decades into the “Information Age,” data is something that we still don't quite understand how to steward. Data is not physical, not something that you can lock away today and hope you'll be able to access in 10 or 20 years.… Continue reading Remembrance of Things Past

ZDNet: Story: .Net demystified: What you must know about MS's software scheme. This is “Hailstorm” he's talking about. Suppose, for a moment, that everything could talk to everything else. Your calendar could get information from and supply data to your documents, or your cell phone, or someone else's calendar and cell phone. Your computer's desktop… Continue reading Net demystified: What you must know about MS's software scheme

Yahoo! Groups : ms-hailstorm Messages (membership required) : By: Jacob Levy – Microsoft Passport & HailStorm. All users of the various Win32 OSes will automatically plug in to their HailStorm scheme. Scoble said something about WinMX users not being able to get on the 'net without first signing in. Of course as a side benefit… Continue reading Yahoo

iRights – March 20,2001. Some interesting commentary on “Hailstorm” The article discusses the possibility that somebody will hack this datastore because it's a tempting target. Do the basic analysis: “How hard is it to get into?” and “How tempting is the target?” Remember, security is never perfect, so this analysis is based on the idea… Continue reading March 20,2001

Another comment. There are a bunch of good ideas in HailStorm, and one very bad one. It's not open, it's not a level playing field. I ask the Internet what it wants to do and here's what I hear. “Design a spec for myHailStormServer, and make it run on inexpensive hardware. Make it lightweight and… Continue reading Scripting News

But still signifyin' – “Now the opinions about Hailstorm are flying. The whole discussion of “secret APIs” is particularly funny. I remember about two years ago, my brother and I decided we wanted to use the MSN Messenger protocol for P2P communications. It took us about 40 minutes to look through the type library and… Continue reading opinions about Hailstorm