CAT_sho

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

   The Econom of Oct 14 ogles the catfight between Wintel
   and JavaNet to outclaw whineflesh.


   "Will your next computer be a tin can and a wire?"

      This week's fall in technology stocks was bad enough.
      But what if the Internet destroyed the personal-computer
      industry ...?

      Sun, Oracle and Netscape are spending tens of millions
      of dollars on a bet that the Internet can do a lot more
      than pass around e-mail and transmit data. They think it
      can also do much of the work of today's computers,
      holding not just information but software, from word
      processors and spreadsheets to games and entertainment
      programs. Most radically, they go on to argue that this
      could end the reign of the personal computer. Forget
      Windows 95; some people are starting to wonder if they
      need Microsoft at all.

      But those who predict that such machines will kill the
      PC are ignoring computing history, and glitch-prone real
      life. The PC beat the mainframe because users wanted the
      whole computer on their desktop, not in the basement.
      That makes Java terminals look like a step backwards: by
      putting program storage far away down a shared network,
      it makes it vulnerable to delays, congestion, and all
      the unpredictability of anything out of a user's
      control.


   CAT_sho  (10 kb)