23 February 2012

Your Honor, the Prosecution Rests [UPDATE]

Recent essays here have been on the subject of a disruptive transformation of interTubes computing, specifically the notion that bandwidth will expand enough that "thin client" computing makes its deserved resurgence. Nothing is better than synchronous access. Entropy is bad, and asynchrony is high entropy.

Imagine my surprise then, whilst sipping my Panera dark roast and reading my dead-trees Times to see this. I surely don't condone using any tablet to run Office (wrong input paradigm, by far), but the anorexic nature of the implementation says it all.

Meaningful quotes:

"The secret is that OnLive isn't sending you all of the data from your Web browsing session. It's sending you only a video stream the size of your iPad screen."

That's precisely what happens with a VT-X00 on the human end of RS-232. Remember that.

"OnLive (free) and OnLive Plus ($5 a month) are both brilliantly executed steps forward into the long-promised world of 'thin client' computing, in which we can use cheap, low-powered computers to run programs that live online."

With database driven applications, centrally located, humans need only hold a "terminal" to get stuff done. All we need now is a plentiful supply of Mr. Fusion engines.


[UPDATE]
Well, seems like the kiddies in Redmond aren't entirely brain-dead. They've figured out that a touch based device needs touch based software. Here's the story.

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