Monthly Archives: February 2006

A new Namespaces discussion

Posted on February 26, 2006 by

Eliot Kimber and I were both on the old W3C XML Working Group during the development of the Namespaces in XML specification. Late in the process, pressure from outside the WG forced us to make a major change to the … Continue reading →

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Earthquakes and high tech

Posted on February 25, 2006 by

Ottawa had a little earthquake (magnitude 4.5) yesterday evening at 8:39 pm EST. Ottawa is Canada’s biggest high tech centre (or at least was before the dot.bomb, drawing more investment than Toronto). Like the San Francisco Bay area, Ottawa is … Continue reading →

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Two Web Services Questions (what actually works?)

Posted on February 23, 2006 by

My biggest frustration with the current Web Services debate (triggered innocently in a posting by Don Box, with followups by nearly everyone) is the lack of verifiable information. We need a big, independent study to answer two important questions about … Continue reading →

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Remembering the Y2K panic

Posted on February 20, 2006 by

Steven Levitt (of Freakonomics fame) has started a small controversy by casually mentioning that the Y2K crisis was a false prophesy (his more detailed followup posting is here; he also points to a paper that I didn’t bother reading, but … Continue reading →

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Hire Bob

Posted on February 13, 2006 by

Bob DuCharme, author of many successful books and a long-time XML expert, is leaving Lexis-Nexis.  If you’re looking to hire a senior XML person with good name recognition, you might want to make their loss into your gain.

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The big recycling pile

Posted on February 11, 2006 by

A couple of times every month, I open all the bills, bank statements, investment statements, and government correspondence for my three (!!) corporations and blast through the paperwork (somehow, I always seem to open cheques from customers a bit more … Continue reading →

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The Curse of the Tin Woodman

Posted on February 10, 2006 by

In L. Frank Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Project Gutenberg), the Tin Woodman was originally a human named Nick Chopper. In an effort to prevent his marrying his sweetheart, the Wicked Witch of the East cursed his axe … Continue reading →

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Early retirement is no fun

Posted on February 1, 2006 by

Philip Greenspun has an posting about the problems with early retirement. It’s hard for people to sympathise with the problems of a guy who has enough money that he can buy fun airplanes and not work 9-5, but I have … Continue reading →

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