While all this talk of Web x.0 and applications (such as word processors, etc.) running inside of browsers is going on, I can't help but feel there is one question left unanswered. And that is: Why do we want to run all of our software in this manner? Even Microsoft is starting to lean in this direction with their "Live" services. When will this end? I certainly feel more comfortable with all of my software and files on my local machine, but maybe I'm just paranoid. So what do people think about running applications or, even more ambitiously, whole operating systems across the Internet?
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Anonymous2006-03-14 16:41
It's lame. Where I work there are already a number of applications that simply do not function without internet connectivity (not general use stuff, but databases and such). We get maybe a week or so over the course of a typical year when internet connectivity is lost altogether, and varying degrees of sluggishness or certain sites unreachable, due to outages down the line with our ISP, telecoms or county-wide network. Whenever this happens we invariably get the admin staff (who use the aforementioned internet-dependant applications) ringing us up in a panic because they can't do their work. Yeah, brilliant. Like many things now, nobody considers how something is supposed to function at all in less than optimal conditions.
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Anonymous2006-03-14 17:52
>>1
Why? Because we do not want stuff on our local machine. We want it in a safe place that can be accessed from anywhere in the world.
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Anonymous2006-03-14 18:34
>>3
Having your data readily available from a remote source is one thing. Running applications that depend on, or run from, the internet is another entirely. It's incredibly frustrating when you need to get something off the internet but can't because there are problems with the remote server or something, and knowing there's nothing you can do about it but wait for someone else to fix the problem.