Subject: Re: End of PeeCees? From: "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh at aracnet.com> Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2006 16:58:01 -0700 (PDT) To: cctalk at classiccmp.org This whole "the Internet is the Platform" is rather amusing when you think about it. It's basically Mainframe thinking. It's also about taking control of peoples data away from them, and transferring ownership of that data to the corporations. Granted you have plenty of people that use computers to play games, surf, do email, and *maybe* a little light word processing or spreadsheet usage. They could care less about thier data or thier privicy. OTOH, you have those of us that are writing software, articles, and books, or creating music and video. You also have people with either very slow, or no internet access. Plus there are the people that just value their privacy. While the first group might sucker into this "Internet is the Platform", how many of the second group will? For certain types of users, it might make sense, but one size does not fit all. Take for example the computers available right now that are targeted at home use. You have handhelds, mini-laptops, laptops, giant-laptops, desktops, mini-systems, and power-user setups, video game consoles and set-top boxes. Each of these is a computer, each has its own "niche". While some can be replaced by others, others can't. For example very few laptops come even close to being able to take the place of a "power-user setup", yet a mini-system, video game console, and set-top box are largely the same system and could largely be replaced by the "Internet is the Platform" idea. Am I making sense, or just rambling, who knows. All I know is that I'm not the least bit interested in the "Internet is the Platform", and I'm beating that there are a lot of other people that feel that way. At the same time I fear the corporations and governments might just force this down our throats. Zane