How XML Is Used in the Real World

XML is designed to help store, structure, and transfer data; because it's written using plain text, it can be sent on the Internet and handled by software on many different platforms. XML was designed to let people circulate data. In its five years, hundreds of XML sublanguages—that is, sets of predefined XML elements—have appeared.
For example, suppose you want to perform genealogical research. To search through many genealogical records rapidly, you would need to have those records in a predetermined form, not just in any order in a simple text file. To do that, you could use a specialized XML sublanguage, Genealogical Data Communication (GEDCOM), which defines its own tags for storing names, dates, marriages, and so on. Using GEDCOM, people from all over the world can search genealogical databases rapidly.
XML sublanguages like GEDCOM are called XML applications (the term is a little unfortunate, because software packages are also called applications, but the idea is that these sublanguages are applications of XML). There are hundreds of XML applications, allowing various groups of people to communicate and exchange data. Here's a list of a few of these applications:
• Application Vulnerability Description Language (AVDL)
• Bank Internet Payment System (BIPS)
• Banking Industry Technology Secretariat (BITS)
• Common Business Library (xCBL)
• Connexions Markup Language (CNXML) for Modular Instructional Materials
• Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)
• Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML)
• Financial Exchange (IFX)
• Financial Information eXchange protocol (FIX)
• Financial Products Markup Language (FpML)
• Genealogical Data Communication (GEDCOM)
• Geography Markup Language (GML)
• Global Justice's Justice XML Data Dictionary (JXDD)
• Human Resources Background Checks and Payroll Deductions Language (HR-XML)
• Product Data Markup Language (PDML)
• Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF)
• Telecommunications Interchange Markup (TIM)
• The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)
• Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) by Microsoft
• XML Common Biometric Format (XCBF)
• XML Process Definition Language (XPDL) for workflow management
You can find information about XML applications like these by watching the XML news releases from W3C. The Web site http://www.xml.org/xml/marketplace_company.jsp also lists many XML applications. To get an idea of what's going on in XML these days, we'll take a look at a few of these applications next—and we're going to see more throughout this book.
Using XML: Mathematical Markup Language
Mathematical Markup Language, MathML, was designed to let people embed mathematical and scientific equations in Web pages (in fact, Tim Berners-Lee first developed the World Wide Web so that physicists could exchange papers and documents).
MathML is itself a W3C specification, and you can find it at http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML2/. Using MathML, you can display all kinds of equations, but there's only one commonly used Web browser that supports MathML—the Amaya browser, which is W3C's own testbed browser for testing new HTML elements. You can download Amaya for free from http://www.w3.org/Amaya/.
You can see a MathML document, ch01_08.ml, in Listing 1.8. This document just displays the equation 4x2 – 5x + 6 = 0.
Example 1.8. A MathML Document (ch01_08.ml)

$$


4
⁢

x
2

-

5
⁢
x

+
6

=
0


You can see how this document looks in the Amaya browser in Figure 1.6.

Figure 1.6 A MathML document displayed by the Amaya browser.
Using XML: Chemical Markup Language
Chemical Markup Language (CML) was developed by Peter Murray-Rust and lets you view three-dimensional representations of molecules in a Jumbo browser. Using CML, one chemist can publish a visual model of a molecule and exchange that model with others.
For example, this CML document, from the CML Web site at http://www.xml-cml.org, displays the formamide molecule:


H1 C1 O1 N1 Me1 Me2
H C O N C C
0 1 0 1 3 3


C1 C1 C1 N1 N1
H1 O1 N1 Me1 Me2
1 2 1 1 1

Formamide is the simplest amide ...

This represents a
connection table
for formamide. The structure corresponds to the diagram:

H3 H1 \ / N1-C1=O1 / H2

45.03


Storeroom 12.3


We'll see CML at work tomorrow when we take a look at the Jumbo CML browser.
Using XML: Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language
Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL, pronounced "smile") lets you customize multimedia presentations, and we'll take a look at SMIL in depth in this book. We'll even be able to create SMIL files that can be run in RealNetwork's RealPlayer (now called RealOne). SMIL is a W3C standard, and you can find more about at http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/#SMIL.
For example, here's the beginning of a SMIL document that plays background music and displays a slide show of images and text:

"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-smil/SMIL10.dtd">

Sams Teach Yourself XML in 21 Days

About the Author

Steven Holzner is an award-winning author who has written 80 computing books. He has been writing about XML since it first appeared and is one of the foremost XML experts in the United States, having written several XML bestsellers and being a much-requested speaker on the topic. He's also been a contributing editor at PC Magazine, has been on the faculty of Cornell University and MIT, and teaches corporate programming classes around the United States.

Acknowledgments

A book like the one you're reading is the product of many people's hard work. I'd especially like to thank Todd Green, the acquisitions editor; Songlin Qiu, the development editor; Matt Purcell, the project editor; and Christian Kenyeres, the tech editor.

We Want to Hear from You!

As the reader of this book, you are our most important critic and commentator. We value your opinion and want to know what we're doing right, what we could do better, what areas you would like to see us publish in, and any other words of wisdom you're willing to pass our way.

As an associate publisher for Sams Publishing, I welcome your comments. You can email or write me directly to let me know what you did or didn't like about this book—as well as what we can do to make our books better.

Please note that I cannot help you with technical problems related to the topic of this book. We do have a User Services group, however, where I will forward specific technical questions related to the book.

When you write, please be sure to include this book's title and author as well as your name, email address, and phone number. I will carefully review your comments and share them with the author and editors who worked on the book.

Email:	feedback@samspublishing.com
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For more information about this book or another Sams Publishing title, visit our Web site at http://www.samspublishing.com. Type the ISBN (0672325764) or the title of a book in the Search field to find the page you're looking for.

Introduction

Welcome to Extensible Markup Language (XML), the most influential innovation the Internet has seen in years. XML is a powerful, very dynamic topic, spanning dozens of fields, from the simple to the very complex. This book opens up that world, going after XML with dozens of topics—and hundreds of examples.

Unlike other XML books, this book makes it a point to show how XML actually works, making sure that you see everything demonstrated with examples. The biggest problem with most XML books is that they discuss XML and its allied specifications in the abstract, which makes it very hard to understand what's going on. This book, however, illustrates every XML discussion with examples. It shows all that's in the other books and more besides, emphasizing seeing things at work to make it all clear.

Instead of abstract discussions, this book provides concrete working examples because that's the only way to really learn XML. You're going to see where to get a lot of free software on the Internet to run the examples you create—everything from XML browsers to XPath visualizers to XQuery processors to XForms handlers, which you don't find in other books. You'll create XML-based documents that display multimedia shows you can play in RealPlayer, use browser plug-ins to handle XML-based graphics in the popular Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) browsers, enable Web pages to load and handle XML, and much more. XML can get complicated, and seeing it at work is the best way to understand it.

Part I: At a Glance

Creating XML Documents

Part I provides an overview of XML and many of the popular ways it's used. You'll take a look at the various markup languages that have been created using XML and how they work.

You'll also begin creating your own XML documents in this part, and in the process you'll get all the basics down. you're going to see how to create both well-formed and valid XML documents.

Well-formed documents obey a number of rules, and before an XML document can be considered "official," it must be well-formed. To be valid, an XML document must specify a set of syntax rules, and XML processors can use these rules to check whether that document adheres to those rules. You're going to see the two ways of specifying the syntax of XML documents in this part—by using document type declarations (DTDs) and XML schemas.

Day 1. Welcome to XML

Welcome to Extensible Markup Language, XML, the language for handling data in compact, easy-to-manage form—not to mention the most powerful advance the Internet has seen for years. The XML world is a large and ever-expanding one, full of complex and unpredictable innovations, and this book is your guided tour to that world. We're going to go just about everywhere XML goes these days, and that's going to include some pretty amazing territory. Today, we'll get our start with XML and see what it's good for. Here are today's topics in overview:

• Markup languages
• Introducing XML
• Seeing XML in a browser
• Well-formed and valid XML documents
• Extracting data from XML documents
• Working with XML validators
• Seeing XML at work
• Finding XML resources on the Internet

The name of the game in XML is data, because XML is all about storing your data—phone directories, business orders, book lists, anything you like. Unlike HTML, XML is not about displaying your data—it's about packaging that data to transport it easily. The main reason XML has experienced such popularity is that it stores its data as text, meaning that XML documents can be transferred using the already-existing Web technology, which was built to transfer HTML documents as text.

We'll start today's work by taking a look at the languages designed to let you store and handle text, called markup languages, and there are plenty of them out there. As we're going to see, XML is both different and more powerful than most other markup languages.

Animatronics Degree Programs with Career Information

Animatronics is the art of using robotics and other physical objects to simulate movement in movies, television, commercials and theme parks. There are no specific animatronics degree programs; however, a degree in robotics would successfully prepare graduates for careers in animatronics engineering.

Bachelor of Science Degree in Robotics Engineering

A Bachelor of Science in Robotics Engineering program teaches students how to develop and use computing devices, sensors and other technological devices to create moving, working robotics. Students can apply their knowledge of robotics engineering to eventual careers conceiving, designing and executing animatronics displays for feature films and amusement parks.

Robotics engineering degree programs are better-suited to future animatronics engineers than computer engineering, electronics engineering, software engineering and mechanical engineering programs put together. Students in a robotics engineering program not only learn the basic components of each of these fields of engineering, but also learn how to apply these concepts to practical designing and constructing skills in the field of animatronics and robotics.

Education Prerequisites

Entrance into a bachelor's degree program in robotics engineering requires proof of high school graduation or the equivalent, as well as a strong high school grade point average and standardized test scores. High school students considering an undergraduate degree program in robotics engineering should consider taking higher-level math, science and chemistry courses.

Program Coursework

In addition to a strong focus on science, mathematics and engineering concepts, the courses in a robotics engineering degree program include ethical and contemporary issues in the world of robotics. These are typical subjects included in an undergraduate robotics degree:

• Introduction to robotics
• Foundational theory of robotics
• Robotics engineering
• Modeling of robotics systems
• Mechatronics systems
• Industrial robotics
• Mechanical engineering

Popular Career Options

The only real career choice available to an individual interested in animatronics is as an animatronics engineer. This is an individual who works primarily on movie sets, designing and creating any animatronics robots or creatures. The position is a relatively unique one, and allows for very few experts in the field. Therefore, there are no reliable salary statistics or career outlook statistics available. Areas of growth come mainly in the form of children's puppetry and science fiction animatronics.

Related articles to Animatronics Degrees

• Animatronics Technologist: Job Outlook and Information About a Career in Animatronics Technology

Animatronics is the creation of robots and other animated electronics for entertainment purposes. There are no formal Animatronics Technologist training programz`s in the United States, but Animatronics Technologists often have bachelor's degrees in Theater or Mechanical, Computer or Robotics Engineering. Animatronics Technologists can work as testers, effects creators for films and television, or designers of animatronic creatures for amusement parks or theme restaurants.

• Air Traffic Control and 4 Other Hot Careers That Don't Require a Degree

In this economic downturn, lots of jobless individuals have turned to college to fill time and get career training. But with tuition costs on the rise, many people can't afford a 4-year university education and are hesitant to take on large student loans. Luckily, there are other options available for people who are out of work or just seeking a career change. This article explores some of the best paying jobs that don't require a college education.

Animatronics – with added bite

Skinning up … A utahraptor is prepared to hit the stage as part of Walking With Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular

Over the past two decades CGI has become increasingly prominent in films and television, and along the way animatronic special effects have gradually been consigned to the history books. When the BBC aired Walking With Dinosaurs in 1999, the bar for CGI in television programmes was well and truly raised.

However, in 2007 the prehistoric cast of Walking With Dinosaurs swapped TV for live theatre, this time using state-of-the-art animatronics technology to bring the dinosaurs to life. Walking With Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular has been touring the globe ever since, and from July this year the production has been travelling around the UK, before it finishes its run this month. Essentially, it is an adaptation of the TV show: a 90-minute live-action documentary from the ages when dinosaurs ruled the world.In total, 20 dinosaurs make up the show's cast, ranging from the towering brachiosaurus to the tiny utahraptors. The smallest five dinosaurs are basically men in suits, albeit highly elaborate ones. Predators or xenomorphs, these are not. But the technology that leaves most jaws gaping at the arena shows is in the large dinosaurs – which took four years of research and development.

"They follow anatomical and biology parallels" of the dinosaurs' structures, says Sonny Tilders – whose official title is creature designer. "The bones are generally made of steel. Then they have these 'muscle bags': stretchable netting filled with styrene beads. They make the shape of a bicep or whatever, and stretch between the two parts of the moving limbs. As the dinosaurs move, and as a limb moves, it's actually changing shape. It does what a real limb does."

A lot of hot air

In addition to the muscle sacks and metal frames, the three largest dinosaurs – the tyrannosaurus rex and two brachiosaurs – are also made from fan-forced inflatable sacks, similar to car airbags. These sacks account for such a large volume of the biggest dinosaurs, they are actually 90% inflatable, greatly lowering their weight and also meaning they can be deflated for transport and storage.Two principal technological advances make the show's dinosaurs so much better than previous animatronics creations. First: the hydraulics. The designers pondered what mechanisms could move something so big, yet make it look natural. "Hydraulics came up as the thing that was most appropriate," says Tilders. "But the problem was they are designed to deal with large forces at high precision, and we didn't need the rigidity that makes hydraulics look so robotic."

Although pessimistic hydraulics manufacturers told Tilders his ambitions were impossible, they continued researching regardless. "Somehow we managed to do it. We managed to develop a hydraulics system akin to the way muscles work. That fluid, organic movement – I don't think that's really been done before."

The second, and biggest, hurdle was the dinosaurs' skin. It needed to look convincing, endure show after show and be very lightweight. "The skin is a big surface area," says Tilders. "For our first build of all the dinosaurs we used almost 3km of Lycra to construct the skins. That's a huge weight deficit. It's one of our biggest components. You'd think it's the steel and all the other things – in fact, it's the skin."

But is it purely Lycra? Surely anyone could have figured that one out? Tilders is keen to keep his tricks up his sleeve: "The skin is just Lycra but we do something special to it, which I can't tell you about."

Three operators are required to control a large dinosaur. In between the legs of each one is a chassis where a driver sits; they are responsible for driving their dinosaur around the arena and making sure it is functioning properly. Tilders says they're like "onboard engineers".

The dinosaurs' most complex movements fall to external puppeteers situated off-stage. These are known in the industry as "voodoo operators" – because whatever move they make, the dinosaur will too. They control the robots via radio controllers. Each has a "Waldo rig" – another industry phrase for the system used to transmit motion to the remote puppet. In this case, the rig is a lever and handle which translates the operator's arm movements into dinosaur actions.

"We have a lead voodoo operator who operates the head, neck, tail, – basically all the gross body movements," says the show's head of creatures, Michael Hamilton. "Then you have the auxiliary operator who operates things to do with the eyes, the blinking, the mouth, all of the sound effects."

"It actually looks like something out of Robocop," he says. "The voodoo operators have a cradle that they rest their right arm on, which operates the body. Then you've got what looks like a spine coming off the top of that cradle, which operates anything to do with the neck and head... It's interesting watching the guys up in the rig. They kind of do a dance in the voodoo lounge: moving and jigging around."

Each group of three forms part of a much bigger team of puppeteers, along with the actors in suits who run among the towering animatronic dinosaurs. The nightly shows are highly complex routines that rely on precise synchronisation among the actors, not just technological brilliance conjured up behind the scenes.

Back from the dead

All this technology would mean little if the subject were not compelling to watch. But, put simply, dinosaurs are cool. It's the reason primary school children are taught about them rather than the origins of penicillin, the reason tourists flock to the Natural History Museum, and it's the reason the Arena Spectacular is so successful – the US show has made $110m (£66m) since July 2007. "I think dinosaurs are a bit of a no-brainer," says Tilders. "They are instantly appealing to a certain generation. The dinosaurs are the key to it all."

And this success looks set to continue for Tilders, Hamilton and their team. An animatronics production of King Kong is in the pipeline and they're also working with Dreamworks Animations to adapt a live show of the studio's upcoming movie How to Train Your Dragon.

"I've often thought animatronics died an earlier death than it had to," says Tilders. But the Arena Spectacular has "opened up a new genre: this combination of high-tech puppetry and live entertainment". The future of animatronics looks brighter than it has been for a long while. The special effects that were once on the brink of extinction have found a new lease of life.

Animatronic Obama Going to Disney World With High-Tech Style

LOS ANGELES — Barack Obama was standing on a riser inside a warehouse here, delivering an inspirational speech about the blessings of freedom, when his left index finger began to twitch uncontrollably, unnerving his aides.

The nation’s 44th president was in obvious distress. At least it looked like him. But with silicone skin and a tangled nest of wires for veins, this Obama was a 21st-century reproduction.

More specifically, it was an audio-animatronic representation of the president, as imagined by the Walt Disney Company, and assembled with the direct involvement of the White House staff — and of Mr. Obama himself. The president supplied not just his measurements, but he also recorded that speech (which was initially drafted by a Disney writer) — and yet another recitation of the oath of office, this one in Disney high-definition sound.

In that Hollywood building here, the life-size, three-dimensional figure was being put through its final tune-up, its chin rising and hands gesturing in response to technicians, in preparation for shipment to the Hall of Presidents exhibit at Disney World in Orlando, Fla.

Disney officials declined to say how much it cost to build an Obama. They have cloaked the project with a blanket of secrecy befitting the Secret Service, permitting this reporter to be the only journalist thus far to view the figure up close but allowing only a Disney photographer to take its picture.

Mr. Obama has seen renderings of the figure, telling a Disney employee, Pamela Fisher, “that we had made him better-looking than he was.”

Mr. Obama is not the first president to send his voice, or inseam, to Disney World; George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were also given speaking roles in the exhibit during their terms and assisted Disney’s “imagineers” in the creation of their likenesses. But the Obama figure is assuredly the most lifelike of them all.

The public is to get its first glimpse of “Robobama,” as it is known among some handlers, on July 4. The unveiling will be in a Disney World theater, alongside animatronic figures of every other president. As in the past, the program will end with each president nodding or turning toward the audience during a roll call, as if Mount Rushmore had suddenly come alive.

“Young children watch this, and you want them to feel a sense of identification with the president,” said Doris Kearns Goodwin, a presidential historian, who was recruited by Disney two years ago to write a Hollywood-style treatment about the presidents, which became the basis for a 20-minute documentary made for the exhibit. “This makes the president someone not so far removed from them.”

The exhibit opened in the early 1970s and has resulted in countless middle school term papers about the presidents. It has been closed since Election Day as it receives the biggest face-lift in its history.

The company has much riding on the exhibit, with visitors’ spending at Disney World having dipped sharply in the midst of the economic downturn.

The exhibit will open with the new film, narrated by the actor Morgan Freeman. At a certain point, the Abraham Lincoln figure will rise and speak to the audience, as it always has, but now it will deliver the Gettysburg Address in its entirety.

“And this is the first time George Washington will have a speaking role,” said Kathy Rogers, a senior show producer for Walt Disney Imagineering, the unit that oversees the creative side of the theme parks.

But the emotional high point is intended to be the introduction of the Obama figure, who will yet again be heard taking the oath.

Mr. Obama recorded this version on March 4 in the White House Map Room — the same room where he retook the oath after a minor flub on Inauguration Day — to accommodate the Disney World theater’s new sound system. At that time, Mr. Obama also read aloud a short speech to be delivered by the figure, one that ultimately passed through the computer of Jon Favreau, a presidential speechwriter.
“That speech took a village,” said Ms. Fisher, the senior Disney writer on the project who along with Ms. Rogers traveled to Washington in March to guide the president through his role.

The Obama figure’s closest forefather is not Lincoln but a modern-day Capt. Jack Sparrow. Assisted by Johnny Depp, who played the captain in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, Disney recently installed an animatronic version of the Sparrow character in the Orlando theme park.

The Obama figure is the result of attention to minute details by Disney sculptors, animators, engineers and even anatomists who pored over presidential photographs and video of him and then drew on the latest advances in robotic technology.

Thus the audio-animatronic Obama purses its lips to pronounce its b’s and p’s in a way frighteningly evocative of the real one, and raises its hands, open-palmed, while shrugging its shoulders, in a way that can only be described as Obamaesque. Even the president’s wedding ring, with its braided design, has been recreated.
After their work was done with the president, Ms. Fisher and Ms. Rogers said they were given a special tour of the White House.

For Ms. Fisher, there was a sense of déjà vu. She had traveled to the White House on Disney’s behalf in 2001 to capture the voice of Mr. Bush. After he had finished his “take,” she said, he stiffened his arms and “started acting like he was an animatronic figure.”

“He’s got a sense of humor,” she added.

How XML Is Used in the Real World

XML is designed to help store, structure, and transfer data; because it's written using plain text, it can be sent on the Internet and handled by software on many different platforms. XML was designed to let people circulate data. In its five years, hundreds of XML sublanguages—that is, sets of predefined XML elements—have appeared.

For example, suppose you want to perform genealogical research. To search through many genealogical records rapidly, you would need to have those records in a predetermined form, not just in any order in a simple text file. To do that, you could use a specialized XML sublanguage, Genealogical Data Communication (GEDCOM), which defines its own tags for storing names, dates, marriages, and so on. Using GEDCOM, people from all over the world can search genealogical databases rapidly.
XML sublanguages like GEDCOM are called XML applications (the term is a little unfortunate, because software packages are also called applications, but the idea is that these sublanguages are applications of XML). There are hundreds of XML applications, allowing various groups of people to communicate and exchange data. Here's a list of a few of these applications:

• Application Vulnerability Description Language (AVDL)
• Bank Internet Payment System (BIPS)
• Banking Industry Technology Secretariat (BITS)
• Common Business Library (xCBL)
• Connexions Markup Language (CNXML) for Modular Instructional Materials
• Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML)
• Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML)
• Financial Exchange (IFX)
• Financial Information eXchange protocol (FIX)
• Financial Products Markup Language (FpML)
• Genealogical Data Communication (GEDCOM)
• Geography Markup Language (GML)
• Global Justice's Justice XML Data Dictionary (JXDD)
• Human Resources Background Checks and Payroll Deductions Language (HR-XML)
• Product Data Markup Language (PDML)
• Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF)
• Telecommunications Interchange Markup (TIM)
• The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)
• Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) by Microsoft
• XML Common Biometric Format (XCBF)
• XML Process Definition Language (XPDL) for workflow management
You can find information about XML applications like these by watching the XML news releases from W3C. The Web site http://www.xml.org/xml/marketplace_company.jsp also lists many XML applications. To get an idea of what's going on in XML these days, we'll take a look at a few of these applications next—and we're going to see more throughout this book.

Using XML: Mathematical Markup Language

Mathematical Markup Language, MathML, was designed to let people embed mathematical and scientific equations in Web pages (in fact, Tim Berners-Lee first developed the World Wide Web so that physicists could exchange papers and documents).

MathML is itself a W3C specification, and you can find it at http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML2/. Using MathML, you can display all kinds of equations, but there's only one commonly used Web browser that supports MathML—the Amaya browser, which is W3C's own testbed browser for testing new HTML elements. You can download Amaya for free from http://www.w3.org/Amaya/.

You can see a MathML document, ch01_08.ml, in Listing 1.8. This document just displays the equation 4x2 – 5x + 6 = 0.
Example 1.8. A MathML Document (ch01_08.ml)

$$


4
⁢

x
2

-

5
⁢
x

+
6

=
0


You can see how this document looks in the Amaya browser in Figure 1.6.

Figure 1.6 A MathML document displayed by the Amaya browser.
Using XML: Chemical Markup Language

Chemical Markup Language (CML) was developed by Peter Murray-Rust and lets you view three-dimensional representations of molecules in a Jumbo browser. Using CML, one chemist can publish a visual model of a molecule and exchange that model with others.
For example, this CML document, from the CML Web site at http://www.xml-cml.org, displays the formamide molecule:



H1 C1 O1 N1 Me1 Me2
H C O N C C
0 1 0 1 3 3


C1 C1 C1 N1 N1
H1 O1 N1 Me1 Me2
1 2 1 1 1

Formamide is the simplest amide ...

This represents a
connection table
for formamide. The structure corresponds to the diagram:

H3 H1 \ / N1-C1=O1 / H2

45.03


Storeroom 12.3


We'll see CML at work tomorrow when we take a look at the Jumbo CML browser.
Using XML: Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language
Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL, pronounced "smile") lets you customize multimedia presentations, and we'll take a look at SMIL in depth in this book. We'll even be able to create SMIL files that can be run in RealNetwork's RealPlayer (now called RealOne). SMIL is a W3C standard, and you can find more about at http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/#SMIL.

For example, here's the beginning of a SMIL document that plays background music and displays a slide show of images and text:


"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-smil/SMIL10.dtd">

Animatronics

Animatronics is the use of electronics and robotics in mechanised puppets to simulate life.

Animatronics are mainly used in moviemaking, but also in theme parks and other forms of entertainment. Its main advantages to CGI and stop motion is that it is not a simulation of reality, but are physical objects moving in real time in front of the camera. The technology behind animatronics has become more advanced and sophisticated over the years, making the puppets even more realistic and lifelike.
Garner Holt Productions, Inc. of San Bernardino, California; UCFab International, LLC of Apopka, Florida; Sally Corporation in Jacksonville, Florida; and Lifeformations of Bowling Green, Ohio are among the leaders in manufacturing animatronics for the theme park industry as well as for museums, restaurants, retail establishments and many other themed environments.

Animatronics for film and television productions are used to perform action on camera in situations where the action involves creatures that do not exist, the action is too risky or costly to use real actors or animals, or the action could never be obtained with a living person or animal. The application of animatronics today includes computer controlled as well as radio and manually controlled devices. The actuation of specific movements can be obtained with electric motors, pneumatic cylinders, hydraulic cylinders and cable driven mechanisms. The type of mechanism employed is dictated by the character parameters, specific movement requirements and the project constraints. The technology has advanced to the point that animatronic puppets can be made indiscernible from their living counterparts.

Time to Panic About Y2K38

In a nutshell, the year 2038 problem, as it is also known, is that most Unix-like operating systems represent time as the number of seconds since January 1, 1970. On 32-bit systems, that second count is a signed 32-bit integer. What that, in turn, means -- unfortunately for us all -- is that the latest time that can be represented is 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, January 19, 2038.

Macworld dominated the headlines last week, so it's likely many unsuspecting readers were in too comfortable a state of Mac nirvana to realize what was happening in the rest of the world. Snap out of it, people! Y2K38 is coming, and as of Saturday, the 30-year countdown has already begun!

Slashdot's bloggers can always be counted upon to be on top of potential crises in the geek world, and a good thing too, because there's been very little mention of the impending crisis elsewhere. But sure enough, alert Slashdot blogger kdawson sounded the alarms on Tuesday with a post calling attention to the Y2K38 phenomenon, and his was followed by no fewer than 530 comments.

In a nutshell, the year 2038 problem, as it is also known, is that most Unix-like operating systems represent time as the number of seconds since January 1, 1970. On 32-bit systems, that second count is a signed 32-bit integer. What that, in turn, means -- unfortunately for us all -- is that the latest time that can be represented is 03:14:07 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) on Tuesday, January 19, 2038.

Oh, that we could see Wednesday, Jan. 20 that year! But alas, it may not be so. As with Y2K, times beyond the critical point will be represented internally as negative numbers, causing programs to believe the year is 1901. Doom will certainly follow -- or, at least, something might happen.

'Much Scarier'

"Most of the Y2K problems were just display errors, not bugs in the actual calculations going on under the scenes," wrote jandrese. "2038 is much scarier and is a lot more difficult to fix."

The best way to fix the problem is likely to switch to a 64-bit representation of time, but "thus far not too many people have made moves in that direction," jandrese added. "Switching to 64 bits is not as easy as it might sound, either, since lots of programs use timestamps and many of them make assumptions as to the size of their time fields."

Not everyone, however, is sure that the situation is quite that dire.

'A Non-Issue'

"The Y2K38 thing is really interesting, I think. I don't know how much of an impact it will have, but a lot of Unix code is built on those old timestamps," Slashdot founder Rob Malda told LinuxInsider. "I guess it's better we find out now than wait."
Even more so: "I think it's a non-issue in most cases," blogger Kevin Dean asserted. "*nix is built around free software, and the one variant that isn't, Unix 'proper,' is essentially irrelevant. The 32-bit addressing should also be addressed by the move now to 64-bit systems."

Some legacy applications might be "minimally affected by this," Dean told LinuxInsider, "but I think the fact that those people have uneditable, unsupported legacy applications that are critical to their operating is MUCH more of an issue than the date being off. This is nothing more than a low-severity bug and will be fixed without much effort."

Much Ado About Little
Indeed, one of the big lessons learned from the original Y2K was that "it was too much ado about too little," Slashdot blogger yagu told LinuxInsider. "We feared the worst and got the best, all things considered -- no major meltdowns, no critical systems failures, and civilization kept on marching.

"Even taking into consideration embedded systems, it just doesn't seem plausible we're up against any horrible scenario," yagu concluded. "There may be glitches here and there, and we will fix them as we discover them, but we're not up against anything frightening."

Perhaps the most profound comment on the topic, however, came from Slashdot blogger Malevolent Tester: "Is this going to affect the Duke Nukem Forever release?"
Sun Buys MySQL

Moving right along, the other biggest topic on the blogs recently appeared to be Sun's purchase of MySQL, announced formally in Jonathan Schwartz's blog on Wednesday. That was followed by more than 50 comments and then picked up for discussion on the Linux Today blog and All About Linux.

"If Sun's track record with OpenOffice is an indicator, MySQL under Sun is a good thing," yagu said. "Sun is one of a few large corporations that seem to 'get' Open Source more than the rest."

Companies will be more likely to try an Open Source database like MySQL when they know it has the backing of a major expert in the industry like Sun, yagu added.
A Question of Trust

An opposing view: "Sun has really been screwing around with open source for way too long to really figure how much to trust them still," wrote Barney on the Linux Today blog. "I'm still pissed they bought and killed off those cool box-appliance guys. Cobalt (NYSE: CBZ) IIRC. They'd be rocking the industry if they were allowed to continue as they were."

In the middle ground: "Sun could do right by them, or they could screw it up," Malda said. "They've always struggled with Open Source stuff, but if the right MySQL people stay in control it won't matter. No doubt the code will benefit from their involvement."

The acquisition of MySQL by Sun is a promising thing, Dean said. "I think Sun will continue to ensure that MySQL is freely available to the community and businesses that use it daily," he explained.

Schwartz has said that Sun's first goals are to tightly integrate and optimize MySQL with its own Solaris stack, Dean added. "While some people fear that Sun will ruin MySQL, I think people need to watch Sun a bit more closely - they're very clearly ramping up to make the SAMP (Solaris, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) stack a LAMP killer in the data center, and because they have a clearly defined focus (unlike GNU/Linux's a-bit-of-everything approach), they may just do it."
Sun in the Cloud?

Speculating as to Sun's motivations, "you have to ask yourself the question, why?" Slashdot blogger gasmonso told LinuxInsider.

"While I'm not psychic, I have seen a lot of interest in cloud computing," he noted. "Maybe Sun envisions running their newly acquired database on a Sun cloud. This would allow them to compete with various other giants like IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Dell."
Of course, at this particular time of year, everything inevitably comes around to Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) again. "I know a few folks at MySQL, and good for them I guess," Malda concluded. "If I had their stock options I could buy me a MacBook Air."

'Simputer' Aims at the Developing World

In an effort to bring the Internet to the masses in India and other developing countries, several academics and engineers have used their spare time to design a sub-$200 handheld Net appliance.

Called the Simputer, for SIMple ComPUTER, the device will enable India's illiterate population to surf the Web. According to the Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook 1999, some 48% of the Indian population can't read or write.

The device was designed by professors and students at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) at Bangalore, and engineers from Bangalore-based design company Encore Software. A prototype of the appliance will be available in August.

The Simputer is built around Intel's StrongARM CPU, with Linux as the operating system. It will have 16 MB of flash memory, a monochrome liquid crystal display (LCD) with a touch panel overlay for pen-based computing, and a local-language interface. The appliance will have Infrared Data Association and Universal Serial Bus interfaces, and will feature Internet access and mail software.

The designers expect the Simputer to be used not only as a personal Internet access device, but also by communities of users at kiosks. A smart-card interface to the device will enable the use of the device for applications such as micro-banking.
Taking Technology to Everyone

"We expect to change the model for the proliferation of information technology in India," says Professor Swami Manohar, professor in the computer science and automation department of the IISc. "The current PC-centric model is not sustainable because of the high cost of the PC, and also because we expect that most of the users will not be literate."

A subsequent version of the Simputer will also offer speech recognition for basic navigation through the software menus, says Manohar. The speech dictionary will be customizable to support different languages. A text-to-speech system will also be developed to take the technology to India's illiterate population.
Later versions will also offer wireless technology.

The intellectual property for the device has been transferred free to a non-profit trust, called the Simputer Trust, and both the software and the hardware for the appliance have been offered as open source technology. In the open source model of development, users and developers, often unpaid, work together to update technology.
Manohar says that the trust decided to put the technology in Open Source to enable third party software developers and designers to add value to the platform.
The technology for the product will be licensed to manufacturers at a nominal fee of $1150, which is to be used to finance upgrades to the Simputer.

A number of large manufacturers have shown interest in licensing the technology, though the interest is currently confined to Indian companies, according to Vinay Deshpande, chairman of Encore and a member of the Simputer Trust.

Deshpande says that the designers have been able to achieve the sub-$200 price point since the electronic components used in the device are all off-the-shelf volume components, and the software is primarily open source software such as Linux.

The Year 2038 Bug - Y2K38 Problem - Many of your applications will crash

Try this First.
Sign out from yahoo messenger or gmail talk. Open your System Date and Time Settings. Change the year to anything beyond 2038. You can try setting the year to 2040. Now try logging in to either of the messenger. It does not log in and gives you some error. Surprised!
So, Where's the problem ?

The source of the problem is actually the way some(major) applications store their date/time data types. Programmes using POSIX time representation will be affected by this problem. The structure time_t is a value type which stores time in a 32-bit signed integer. It stores the time as number of seconds elapsed since January 1, 1970. So it is capable of representing time which can be addressed within total of 231 seconds. According to this, the latest time that it can store is 03:14:07 UTC, Tuesday, January 19, 2038. After this time, the sign bit of the 32-bit signed integer will be set and it will represent a negative number. As I said, the time is stored as number of seconds elapsed since 1st January 1970, this negative number will be added to compute the time as per the POSIX standards. But this being a negative number it will calculate the time by subtracting this many seconds from 1st January 1970 which will eventually generate a historical date-time which will cause the applications to fail. This time will be Friday, December 1901 and is called the wrap-around date. Applications written in C in many operating system will also be affected as the POSIX presentation of time is widely used there. The animation below visualizes actual scenario in an easier manner. This bug is often denoted as "Y2038", "Y2K38", or "Y2.038K" bug.


Simulate the bug in a C Programme.

The following ANSI C programme when compiled simulates the bug. The output produced by the programme is also attached below the code. This code has been been referred from here.
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#include
#include
#include
#include
int main (int argc, char **argv)
{
time_t t;
t = (time_t) 1000000000;
printf ("%d, %s", (int) t, asctime (gmtime (&t)));
t = (time_t) (0x7FFFFFFF);
printf ("%d, %s", (int) t, asctime (gmtime (&t)));
t++;
printf ("%d, %s", (int) t, asctime (gmtime (&t)));

return 0;
}

Output :
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1000000000, Sun Sep 9 01:46:40 20012147483647,
Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038-2147483648,
Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 1901

Above programme being a strict ANSI, should compile using any C compiler on any platform. Now lets take a look at a perl script on both UNIX and Windows 2000. This script has been referred from here.
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#!/usr/bin/perl #
# I've seen a few versions of this algorithm
# online, I don't know who to credit. I assume
# this code to by GPL unless proven otherwise.
# Comments provided by William Porquet, February 2004.
# You may need to change the line above to # reflect the location of your Perl binary
# (e.g. "#!/usr/local/bin/perl").
# Also change this file's name to '2038.pl'.
# Don't forget to make this file +x with "chmod".
# On Linux, you can run this from a command line like this:
# ./2038.pl use POSIX;
# Use POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface),
# a set of standard operating system interfaces.

$ENV{'TZ'} = "GMT";

# Set the Time Zone to GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) for date
# calculations.

for ($clock = 2147483641; $clock < 2147483651; $clock++) {
print ctime($clock); }

# Count up in seconds of Epoch time just before and after the
# critical event.
# Print out the corresponding date in Gregorian calendar
# for each result.
# Are the date and time outputs correct after the critical
# event second?


A mere handful of operating systems appear to be unaffected by the year 2038 bug so far. For example, the output of this script on Debian GNU/Linux (kernel 2.4.22):

# ./2038.pl
Tue Jan 19 03:14:01 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:02 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:03 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:04 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:05 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:06 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038
Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 1901
Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 1901
Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 1901

Windows 2000 Professional with ActivePerl 5.8.3.809 fails in such a manner that it stops displaying the date after the critical second :

C:\>perl 2038.pl
Mon Jan 18 22:14:01 2038
Mon Jan 18 22:14:02 2038
Mon Jan 18 22:14:03 2038
Mon Jan 18 22:14:04 2038
Mon Jan 18 22:14:05 2038
Mon Jan 18 22:14:06 2038
Mon Jan 18 22:14:07 2038
Do we have a solution ?

Yes, Of course, There have been many solutions proposed worldwide for this problem. Few of them are listed here.
1.) Re-define the time_t structure as 64-bit.

This is not a solution as the binary compatibility of the software would break here. Programmes depending on the binary representations of time would be in trouble. So we can not even think of this one.
2.) Change time_t from 32-bit signed to 32-bit unsigned.

This seems to be good at first look, but this would just delay(post-pone) the judgement day to the year 2106 as it will give some more scope by adding another usable bit. You will be in the same trouble by then. So this is a feasible solution but not a practical one.
3.) Shift from 32-bit systems to 64-bit systems.

Most 64-bit architectures use 64 bit storage to represent time_t. The new wrap-around date with this new (signed)64 bit representation will not come before 290 billion years. It is positively predicted that by the year 2038 all 32-bit systems will be phased out and all systems will be 64-bit.

2038 - The Next Computer Time Bug

Remember the turn of the millennium? Whilst many of us were counting down the seconds until midnight, there were network administrators across the globe with their fingers crossed hoping their computer systems will still be working after the new millennium kicked in.

The millennium bug was the result of early computer pioneers designing systems with only two digits to represent the time as computer memory was very scarce at the time. The problem didn't arise because of the turn of the millennium, it arose because it was the end of the century and two digit year flicked around to 00 (which the machines assume was 1900)

Fortunately by the turn of the millennium most computers were updated and enough precautions were taken that meant that the Y2K bug, as it became known, didn't cause the widespread havoc it was first feared.

However, the Y2K bug is not the only time related problem that computer systems can be expected to face, another problem with the way computers tell the time has been realised and many more machines will be affected in 2038.

The Unix Millennium Bug (or Y2K38) is similar to the original bug in that it is a problem connected with the way computers tell the time. The 2038 problem will occur because most machines use a 32 bit integer to calculate the time. This 32 bit number is set from the number of seconds from 1 January 1970, but because the number is limited to 32 digits by 2038 there will be no more digits left to deal with the advance of time.

To solve this problem, many systems and languages have switched to a 64-bit version, or supplied alternatives which are 64-bit and as the problem will not occur for nearly three decades there is plenty of time to ensure all computer systems can be protected.

However, these problems with timestamps are not the only time related errors that can occur on a computer network. One of the most common causes of computer network errors is lack of time synchronization. Failing to ensure each machine is running at an identical time using a NTP time server can result in data being lost, the network being vulnerable to attack from malicious users and can cause all sorts of errors such as emails arriving before they have been sent.

To ensure your computer network is adequately synchronized an external NTP time server is recommended.

Richard N Williams is a technical author and specialist in atomic clocks, telecommunications, NTP and network time synchronisation helping to develop dedicated NTP clocks. Please visit us for more information about an NTP server or other NTP time server solutions.

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