entertainment and much more, and is designed to put users in control of their digital lives.
That was about 9 months ago. Last month, we got Microsoft Hailstorm. That white paper says:
People are not in control of the technology that surrounds them....HailStorm makes the technology in your life work together on your behalf and under your control.
Oh, good, so now the high tech halogen light in my apartment will stop blinking randomly.
Microsoft is not alone. Here's a quote from a Sun Jini whitepaper:
These three facts (you are the new sys admin, computers are nowhere, the one computer is everywhere) should combine to improve the world of using computers as computers -- by making the boundaries of computers disappear, by making the computer be everywhere, and by making the details of working with the computer as simple as putting a DVD into your home theater system.
And don't even remind me of the fertilizer George Gilder spread about Java:
A fundamental break in the history of technology...
That's one sure tip-off to the fact that you're being assaulted by an Architecture Astronaut: the incredible amount of bombast; the heroic, utopian grandiloquence; the boastfulness; the complete lack of reality. And people buy it! The business press goes wild!
Why the hell are people so impressed by boring architectures that often amount to nothing more than a new format on the wire for RPC, or a new virtual machine? These things might be good architectures, they will certainly benefit the developers that use them, but they are not, I repeat, not, a good substitute for the messiah riding his white ass into Jerusalem, or world peace. No, Microsoft, computers are not suddenly going to start reading our minds and doing what we want automatically just because everyone in the world has to have a Passport account. No, Sun, we're not going to be able to analyze our corporate sales data "as simply as putting a DVD into your home theatre system."
That was about 9 months ago. Last month, we got Microsoft Hailstorm. That white paper says:
People are not in control of the technology that surrounds them....HailStorm makes the technology in your life work together on your behalf and under your control.
Oh, good, so now the high tech halogen light in my apartment will stop blinking randomly.
Microsoft is not alone. Here's a quote from a Sun Jini whitepaper:
These three facts (you are the new sys admin, computers are nowhere, the one computer is everywhere) should combine to improve the world of using computers as computers -- by making the boundaries of computers disappear, by making the computer be everywhere, and by making the details of working with the computer as simple as putting a DVD into your home theater system.
And don't even remind me of the fertilizer George Gilder spread about Java:
A fundamental break in the history of technology...
That's one sure tip-off to the fact that you're being assaulted by an Architecture Astronaut: the incredible amount of bombast; the heroic, utopian grandiloquence; the boastfulness; the complete lack of reality. And people buy it! The business press goes wild!
Why the hell are people so impressed by boring architectures that often amount to nothing more than a new format on the wire for RPC, or a new virtual machine? These things might be good architectures, they will certainly benefit the developers that use them, but they are not, I repeat, not, a good substitute for the messiah riding his white ass into Jerusalem, or world peace. No, Microsoft, computers are not suddenly going to start reading our minds and doing what we want automatically just because everyone in the world has to have a Passport account. No, Sun, we're not going to be able to analyze our corporate sales data "as simply as putting a DVD into your home theatre system."
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