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RE: The Three Myths of XML

• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• To: Dave Winer <dave@u...>, XML-Dev Mailing list <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2001 11:01:05 -0500

His premise is right on.  He misses his audience if that 
isn't a satire.  Developers already know that stuff and 
marketeers don't care because hyping to the emotions is 
what they do.  So who is being fooled or who is the audience 
for such myths?  We have a lot kids out there who are 
in their zealot phase of growth, but that is just mammal 
stuff.  None of this has anything to do with XML.  If 
Kendall is demythologizing XML, he should publish in 
the Wall Street Journal because the audience for XML.COM 
already knows what a data standard is and does.

But compatibility is not just a problem of people wanting 
it.  It has to be possible in the sense that for a product 
to be a commodity, sufficient commonality must exist to 
create a sharable data definition.  Now you can be right 
because the mere existence of the data standard does not 
create market; a market has to want interoperability, accept 
the costs of local customization (usually unavoidable but 
reducible because of the data standard) but without the 
data standard all the wishing and hoping and thinking 
and praying only wears out the knees.  

So how are these sold?  Myths.  Come to grips with the 
mammalStuff.  Mammals really don't mind  being 
lied to if they see money or thrils in accepting that lie for a 
period of time.  The Semantic Web is a myth.  But just like 
before, old technology will be repackaged, given new 
names, *inventors* will be given honorary degrees 
(as Robin Williams says, nerf dildos) and the press 
will tout all of that, and lo and behold, the web 
will become semantic.   Will that make a difference? 
The actual problem will be if people can't tell the 
difference between a machine's opinion and a person's 
opinion.  Otherwise, we know what expert systems (aka, 
closed world models) do.

Did anyone really think the Bay City Rollers were the 
next Beatles?  Well, it put a lot of screaming girls 
in the seats and they paid for their tickets.  Some of 
them still treasure the posters and some of those go 
for high prices.  Gotta love it.

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Winer [mailto:dave@u...]
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2001 10:37 AM
To: Bullard, Claude L (Len); XML-Dev Mailing list
Subject: Re: The Three Myths of XML


Len, I didn't get that it was a satire, and I thought his premise was right
on.

Basically you'll get compatibility when that's what people want.

And (my opinion) XML is a fantastic way to do it.

In other words I agree that it's computer science, nothing amazing about it,
the amazing thing is when people open their systems to be compatible with
others.

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