Re: Will Monolithic Apps Dominate?

[Mismatched NFS IDs <nobody@toad.com>]

On Fri, 18 Jul 1997, Robert Hettinga wrote:

> At 1:33 pm -0400 on 7/18/97, Tim May wrote:
> 
> <an excellent description of the industrial strength software bloat which
> now afflicts the browser market>
> 
> "The Geodesic Network, OpendDoc, and CyberDog"
> http://www.shipwright.com/rants/rant_03.html is the first rant I wrote on
> <ducking> geodesic </d> software. It ended up in a much(!) shorter form as
> a full-page opinion piece in InfoWorld two years ago this October.
> Actually, it's about what happened to me at MacWorld almost exactly two
> years ago.
...
> The software those computers use will not be hard-wired, it will be
> flexible and upgradable. It will be 'out of control'. It will be geodesic,
> like the network itself.
> 
> Cheers,
> Bob Hettinga

I think that depends on what people start adopting.  If you want
"geodesic" software, use Linux.  Pieces are there from every continent,
and all any business needs to do to have a driver and applications written
for any hardware is to release the spec.  It is flexible and upgradable
and 'out of control', and is developed on the internet.  Interestingly
enough, the only stego-crypto "device" I know of is the linux loop device.

There are some crypto plugins for MS, but nothing I know of will bury your
info encrypted with DES or IDEA in the lsbs of a .wav file.

The other interesting thing is that the bloatware is only possible BECAUSE
of Moore's law.  Windows really needs 16Mb, a big hard drive, and a fast
pentium, and it is nice that the price point (around $2k) of the new
machines are about right for each release of a new MS product.  But even
if cpu-memory power (and price per bit sent over the internet) keeps
doubling, the complexity of code is growing exponentially too.  Or was
growing - I think it has past the point where they can add code to the
blob and have it work.

If you are right, then there should be a shift from MS to Linux or
FreeBSD.  Especially if the Wabi32 or Wine projects succeed :).

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