var name;
//JSON
name = eval(jsonString).name

//XML (at least in IE)
var xmlparser = new ActiveXObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.3.0");
var doc = xmlparser.loadXML(xmlString);
name = selectSingleNode("name").value;


That's one reason.

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Yes, this is quite true. In fact, most people do not even understand the "Linux is free" argument. To them, since Windows comes with their new laptop, it is free too. MS and Apple download the patches and most people just roll along with the OS they have until its time to buy a new computer. Mac folks may be a bit more aggressive about upgrading and paying for it but not much. Personally, I would love to go to work and develop on Linux. When I come home though and want to write, create music, make photo galleries for my family, I want to do just those things. The last thing I want to do is tweak my computer.

I can't even begin to decipher this statement except to say that the poster you replied to probably mean "acceptable for the state to murder people". He is absolutely correct. Murder by the state is a barbaric practice common to the countries he mentioned and not to many other civilized countries. If you don't see the difference between state sponsored murder and human on human murder then there is probably nothing to discuss. I am happy you're not American though; we have far too many people of your mind here already.

Not the next "big" thing, the next "available" thing. The reason Apple switched to Intel had nothing to do with the suitability of the powerpc chip which ran much cooler and more efficiently than Intel but the availability. They got sick and tired of hold-ups on manufacturing of the powerpcs.

When I learned how to program in the mid '80s, I was greatly aided by a course I had been forced to take (and hated) in High School. That course was Typing. My own take is that I would like my children to learn programming as a 'fallback' like how men in my generation could always bang nails if the going got tough. I was more excited by this plan in the 90s when programming was actually lucrative but it will still serve. Even in this crap economy there's still lots of programming jobs. So I'm all for your course plan and Python seems okay as a language (boring but so was typing). Firebug has a nice built-in Javascript console so you might want to consider that.

Really? I have Dreamweaver 8 and it just creates tons of tables and paragraphs. I wish it did create Divs. I have to erase everything the non-techies I work with create with it and put in non-insane CSS. Unfortunately, tables are sometimes the only reasonable cross-browser solution.

Ha, is to laugh. You downloaded the flash player so long ago, you forgot you had it and thought Youtube just ran on internet dust. Silverlight is currently used by Netflix for their "Watch Intantly" feature on the Mac. I've watched over twenty movies using it. The quality is way better than Youtube and it's done a much better job of streaming than Media Player on the PC. Furthermore, for those complaining about Firefox crashing with Silverlight, Firefox just plain crashes, all the time, on every platform. It's not the golden standard. Funny to find the folks who are usually complaining about Flash, now praising it in regards to Silverlight.

Just wanted to see if I could jump onto a Joe The Plumber thread. I've never thought about Joe the Plumber and PHP at the same time but okay, yeah, that works.