Stardate 20010802.0906 (On Screen): They just won't let it rest, will they? IBM is making another attempt to push "thin client computing", but the
real point of which is "big iron computing" and guess who gets to sell the big iron? They're going to build a network in Europe originally for "scientists and researchers" but with hopes that it will become the common model there for individuals.
I have several objections to this concept. First, at the rate that cost-of-computing is falling, centralizing it doesn't make sense. For nearly anything except mondo-bit-crunching, it's not that expensive now to buy hardware to solve your problem. Second, any centralized system will be vulnerable to attack and any failure in it will have massive consequences. As an engineer, I don't like single points of failure. Distributed systems are inherently more resiliant. Third, I'm afraid that if some poor or politically-motivated choices (e.g. Java) are made in establishing this model that it will institutionalize those choices. IBM's done it before; we're still living with the consequences of their choice of the x86 over the 68K for the original PC. (discuss)
