Interopera... what?

XML is brilliant. The idea behind it, I mean. I don't want to get into "Michel-esque" (insiders will understand this one) discussions about XML implementations in real-life software, but the general idea of interoperability allowed by an open standard as XML is brilliant.

Kudos for XML.

And then this. What in the name of [name-your-favorite-deity] is this? Do they really think it will work?

For the lazy ones around: linked article is about New Zealand patent 525484, submitted by Microsoft and open for objections until the end of may, where M$ tries to patent the use of a single XML file for a word-processing document.

In other words, you can integrate with XML-based word documents, as long as you pay them...