XML will be natively supported by the next release of ECMAScript (the “new” name for JavaScript). You can read more about that in this article. The ECMA announcement can be found here (PDF).
Somebody pointed me to this amazing story about Linus and his amazing adventures in GNU/Wonderland. It’s really worth a read. You’ll find Mr Gates, Mr Wall (and his book) and other prominents in the Linux world, if you read closely (well, not that closely).
It’s here
Man I hate people changing their MSN nickname every day 
Some manage to put their full life story in it, including what they ate that day, how many more tests they have to do this week, that’s the summer is coming, the concert they’re going to visit next weekend, how many more days until their holiday, or they use a name like *****((((((((( Peep )))))))))) ******, oh yeah you’re cool… I used to run a text to voice plugin for Trillian but just had to deinstall it because of those lousy MSN nicknames (with some people it took 2 minutes to let it pronounce a nickname: “slash-slash-slash-backslash-left parethesis-left parenthesis-at-left parenthesis-b-right-parenthis-slash-slash-backslash-underscore next saturday, you know the deal-explamation point, just came online”).
That you want your nickname to take up 5 lines of text (waste of my bandwidth!) is wel… fine. But people, PLEASE put at least your real name in it. When I get a message like “The summer is coming! just came online” I honestly do not have a clue who you are. Or shall I just assume you don’t care?
In the past few days I gave some Mac users the chance to convince me to buy a Mac instead of buying another PC and putting Windows or Linux on it. Since I argued that Apple processors are generally slower (oh no, I mean, run at less megahertz), somebody pointed me to http://www.apple.com/g4/myth/, a talk from Jon Runistein (Apple Senior VP of Hardware). He argues that the speed doesn not only depend on the the amount of megahertz as Intel pushes forward, but also on other factors. Jon calls this the “Megahertz myth”. Sounded applausible to me so far. But what happens? The rest of the presentation is all about the fact that’s the G4’s pipeline is so much shorter (G4 is the processor Apple uses for their Macs).
Apart from the fact that this presentation doesn’t show a refreshing full picture that’s kind of promised, it’s all about showing that that the processors developed by Intel (both Pentium and Itanium) and Sun have so much longer pipelines, which make them very inefficient with a lot of branches. First thing I’m thinking is, why do others have such a long pipeline? I can’t possibly imagine they just didn’t realise it would slow the processor down that much… But even assuming they are that stupid, the pipelines are twice as long at max, but as those processors run at up to 3 times the speed of the G4, wouldn’t that make it faster even if a longer pipeline is bad?
Carlos has been posting “101 reasons why Java is better than .NET”. A summary of the reasons mentioned so far:
1. Run on Multiple Platforms from the Smallest Devices to the Largest Mainframes.
2. Run Dynamic Languages
3. Compile in One Platform Run in Another.
4. Smaller Runtime Download
5. No mandatory upgrades. No subscription fees. No software insurance fees.
6. Run Multiple Versions of the VM (Runtime) on the Same Machine
7. Large Innovative Open Source Community
8. Low cost Commercial Quality IDE’s
9. More Available Jobs
10. Better and Standardized Connectivity to Legacy Applications
11. Multiple Vendor Choice and Support
12. Compile to Machine Code
13. Future Proof
14. Most Popular Language in the Corporation
15. Larger Talent Pool
16. More Contributions From R&D Organizations
17. Government Approved
18. More Homogeneous and Less Complex Environment
19. More Deployment Options
20. More Searchable References
21. Better support for Software Process Best Practices
22. Mature Object Oriented Relational Mapping Tools
23. More Productive Coding Tools
24. Cross Platform Integration with Other Languages
25. Higher Paying Jobs
Not all are that impressive IMO (but we’ll see what the other 76 are telling).
