I once worked on an embedded system with not a lot of RAM or code space, and we were ripping features out to put new stuff in and rewriting things to make new things fit (not a bad practice, re-writing, btw). I wrote some tools to do global optimization at the assembly language level and got back 40K because our compiler was one of those $5000 / seat pieces of crap, and we didn't have a debugger, so object-to-source-line mapping, who needs it?<p>Anyway, one of the PMs on the project insisted that this choice little hunk'O'hell communicate with the outside world -- at about 2K bits / sec on a good day -- using XML. Because it was standard. Because XML added to anything makes it better, no matter what it is. Because, well, nobody ever saw that traffic except other computers, but XML!<p>I wanted to kill, kill, kill, but instead I wrote an XML parser (kind of) that fit into about 1K of code. "Don't use entities or CDATA or namespaces," I said, and went away to a better place. I think the PM was happy. That group got sold to a company famous for its 60s-era radios and crappy teevees, and I assume everyone is happy there, because I have not heard a word from them, and XML!