Piestar

I am sure everyone by now has heard the phrase “The customer is always right” at some point in their lives.  The actual meaning though gets lost in translation a lot of the time and it is often taken to mean “The customer is allowed to be a dick” – which they aren’t*.  What it actually means is, “The customers opinion is always valid”.

The point of this is to try to keep your customers happy, and to listen to their concerns.  If a customer is not happy with something about your service or product no decent business would just tell them to ‘piss off’, instead they would try their best to address the customers concern and to try to prevent such occurances in the future.  For example if you sold a spade which the handle kept coming off you’d either replace the item or refund the customers money and, but more importantly, you’d try to identify the cause of the problem.

While often customer complaints are a one-off and usually end there, what is important is to keep a lookout for repeated complaints as they indicate a systemic problem.  For example in a restaurant if a certain dish gets sent back regularly you wouldn’t say that the customers have no taste, instead you’d look into what is in it and how it is made in an attempt to solve the issue entirely.

Customers vs FOSS

Take this blog from Preston Gralla for example.  He says that installing software that is not in the repo’s is too difficult and is holding back Linux adoption.  Not a new statement in the slightest, and one that I both agree with and am sure I have even said before.

It’s not even like he’s being an angry shouter like a lot of us embittered haters have become, he’s clearly following the ‘make every second paragraph praise’ approach which is required (as an offering to the Holy GNU) when writing any article that dares be critical of Linux.  Not that it helped him at all anyway.

He is a ‘customer’ of Ubuntu, just as I am and just as thousands of other people who no doubt share the same view are.  And while many people are about to say something pithy like “Linx doesn’t want you”, may I remind you of Ubuntu Bug #1 – Microsoft has majority marketshare – implying that Ubuntu actually wants customers.

Yet this guy says something that, to him, is an impediment to him using Ubuntu and immediately gets his head bitten off by a horde of angry Linux users who then post massive amounts of comments saying how he is wrong, calling him a shill, claiming he’s getting paid by MS, claiming that the site is fundamentally biased (despite it being home to the infamous SJVN) and generally denying that the problem he outlines could possibly exist, and it’s only because he’s either stupid, or being paid that he can come to such a conclusion.

The following two questions then get raised: Will this torrent of abuse somehow make him change his mind about his claim and realise that the problem he has suddenly isn’t a problem anymore?  And more importantly will he be more disposed to trying and promoting Linux after recieving those responses than before?

Or consider if you went into a bar and ordered a drink, and the drink tasted like cleaning fluid (or otherwise nasty) and you pointed this out to the bartender.  If he (and the other patrons) proceeded to call you an idiot moron you would simply not ever go back and tell all your friends about the bad experience (welcome to my blog!) rather than go ‘you’re right I am a moron’.

The customers complaints are always valid.  Calling them a moron and denying they have a complaint does solve the problem – you no longer have them as a customer.

Installing Software In Linux Sucks

Besides, he’s right.  It’s amusing that the community that touts ‘choice’ as it’s primary selling point presents the argument that he should just wait until the distro updates the repository, rather than be able to easily use new software straight off the bat.

When I was trying Linux I had endless issues with the software in the repo’s being massively out of date, and what do you expect?  You have tens of thousands of apps to track and keep up to date and it’s not even like the iPhone or Android app stores in that developers don’t necessarily submit new versions requiring the repo maintainers to find out when there has been an update (good luck with that).

In an ideal world the repo’s would be all you need (and communism would actually work) but in reality the system of repositorys needs to be supplemented by a system of manual installation in the cases where the software is out of date or simply unavailable.  And the brutal truth is Linux falls flat on it’s face here.

Manual Installation

Welcome to the quagmire that is manual software installation in Linux.  As soon as you’re outside the walled garden of vendor approved obsolete versions of software to be found in the repositories then you’re largely out of luck.

How often have you seen Microsoft being berated for making it’s own ’standards’ for things like word documents and protocols?  How many Linux evangelists have you seem complain that .docx and .doc are not compatible?  Yet these very same evangelists will argue ’till they are blue in the face that somehow multiple incompatible package formats and standard breaking distros is somehow a ‘good thing’ – usually under the guise of ‘choice’.

Hell, I’ve even written a post bashing the Windows software installation method and since this is technically an anti-Linux (and thus visited largely by Windows users) blog I should be getting angry posts saying how I am wrong, and an idiot, yet all I got was agreements and clarifications!  Yet if you say something as BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS as Linux needs a standardized package format you’ll get flamed to a crisp.

The Dead Parrot Horse

I am flogging a dead horse with my point but I think it deserves to be made (and flogged).  Being critical of Linux always reminds me of the Dead Parrot Sketch.  The community is largely unable to accept any** criticism as valid, no matter how obvious or problematic, with the first approach to user complaints to be to deny they exist, then to call the complainer an idiot troll.

This is what is holding Linux back from going mainstream – it’s the fact that the community simply doesn’t care about the needs or issues of the people they are trying to foist Linux upon.

The claims of ‘community development’ are a massive lie in that aside from posting the occasional bug reports (which you can do with closed source) anyone with a problem is abused and faces North Korean levels of censorship***.  You either take what the Linux cult gives you and be quiet, or you simply don’t use it.  Trying to contribute improvements and suggestions just gets you into trouble.

If you’re happy with Linux, sure use it.  If you’re not don’t even bother – it’s simply not worth it.

* Not if I am working there they aren’t

** I think one of the sources of my Ubuntuforums ban was due to an argument where I was trying to propose double clickable .deb files.

*** Preston, try to have the discussion on your blog post on a Linux forum (Ubuntuforums is a good choice) and see how fast the admins delete your post then ban you.

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Everyone’s favorite troll got me thinking again about the GPL and it’s claims of freedom and I think I have worked out another thing that makes me so uneasy about it.

Of course there is absolutely nothing wrong with distributing something under the GPL.  If you are committed to freedom then you’ll accept that people should have the freedom to use whatever license they please.  What is problematic is the popular view that somehow releasing your software under the GPL is somehow ‘ethical’, with some people even suggesting it should be a legal requirement for all software.

If you believe the revisionists they would tell you that ‘free’ is the natural state of software until companies (mainly Microsoft) came in and ruined everything by ‘closing’ the software and charging money, snatching software utopia out of the worlds hands in the process.

But the problem is this: Why is software the only thing covered by these fundamental freedoms?

Books, Software, Movies and Music are all technically the same thing, they are an infinitely reproducible product based upon human endeavour, differing from standard creations (such as making a chair) in that making 1,000,000 is almost as easy as making 10.  Only the first one took the time to make.

The ‘rights’ outlined in the GPL are not just the right to the source code – that is tangential to the issue.  The main ‘rights’ are for free modification and redistribution – If I receive any GPL’d software I am free to edit it and give it away for no cost.  The claims that ‘you can sell GPL’d software’ as a counter to a claim that it creates an unworkable business model are intellectually dishonest since you can only sell it once – after that you’ll be competing with free.

If I were to buy a new book by Iain Banks, should I have the right to edit, make copies and then give those copies away?  Should I demand the original document rather than the printed version as by not being able to do the above easily with a physical book my ‘freedoms’ are being compromised?  If I was to make this argument to most people who support the GPL as a vehicle for software progress I would be laughed at, but it is fundamentally the same thing.

The argument could be made that books are for entertainment, but education largely comes in book form.  Also there are no clear cut lines between media anymore.  If I draw a sapceship on paper, do you have the ‘freedom’ to take it and give it away?  What about if I make a 3D rendering of it?  What if I make the 3D rendering display as a runtime exe?  What if I make it interactive and flyable?  At what point do your ‘fundamental rights’ kick in and allow you to do whatever you want with it?

The belief is that if the GPL was enforced today then the world would be better off, and while true this fails to consider the future.  If these ‘freedoms’ applied to the world of literature then there would be a wealth of works suddenly made available for low or zero cost.  What would then happen though is the individuals who before were creating a livelihood on the sales of their creation would suddenly have no income and be forced to find other avenues for money and while some may be able to monetize their fame most others would not.  As a result you would get people like Stephen King working as shelf stackers in supermarkets rather than doing what they do well and sure, he can write in the evenings and weekends but he would only write a fraction of what he could under the previous system.

The ‘freedom’ model essentially pulls the rug out from under the system of rewarding artists that has worked for hundreds of years.  People claim that you can ’sell support’ and that it is just as profitable, but that is blatantly not true in many cases – only certain software can be made profitable.

I want a system where individuals with talent are able to do nothing but exercise that talent, rather than a system where they have to work mundane jobs to simply make a living and are only allowed to create greatness in the evenings and weekends.

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Around 17% of all traffic that reaches this blog is on the keyword ‘Gimp Sucks’.  Just throwing that out there.

I love the self delusion of the Gimp developers.  Look at their site under ‘contribute’:

“GIMP is Free Software and a part of the GNU Project. In the free software world, there is generally no distinction between users and developers. As in a friendly neighbourhood, everybody pitches in to help their neighbors. Please consider the time you give in assistance to others as payment.”

I’ve always thought there was a massive distinction between artists and developers.  I think what they meant to say is ‘unless you are a programmer we won’t listen to you or cater to your needs’.

Here’s a conversation I have over and over again:

Linux Zealot: You should use Linux, Windows sucks and is for morons.
Me: I need stuff which you don’t get on Linux like Photoshop
Linux Zealot: Use Gimp, it’s better than Photoshop plus it’s free!
Me: Gimp sucks, (insert pages of things that it can’t do here)
Linux Zealot: If you don’t like it don’t use it, stop complaining it’s free!

So to the people pushing Linux (and Gimp) onto users, you have two choices:

1. Shut up and stop promoting it (and calling people idiots for not using it) or…
2. Cater for the needs and desires of your userbase and own up to and address the flaws.

You can’t claim it’s better as well as telling people to not complain as it’s free.  As soon as you say it’s better and evangelise on this basis and it’s not actually better it just makes you a liar.  And if you evangelise on the basis that it’s better and people say it isn’t then their opinions are valid and should be listened to.  Also, telling people to ‘fix it yourself’ does not count.

As soon as you tell them they are, in fact, wrong and it is better* – as the Gimp** supporters love to do – then you have crossed the boundary between lies and self delusion.  Enjor your stay, the Ubuntuforums are first on the left.

* The usual excuse is ‘you are thinking in the ‘Microsoft’ way.  If you’d tried Emacs/VI/Latex before Word you’d find it just as easy’.  Or just plain old WorksForMe(tm).

** Oh, and the name is still embarassing, offensive and exclusionary.

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In a post over at Jerkface Playhouse he points out that with Google having it’s own browser (Chrome), and the Firefox deal about to expire, will Google continue to pay for their position as default search?

I think the answer would have to be a resounding Yes, because imagine if they didn’t and Microsoft then got Bing as default search* on Firefox?  I really hope it happens just because the fallout in the FOSS community would be hilarious** – can you even get Chrome on Linux yet?  Anyway I don’t think Google would allow this to happen so I am saying that the deal will probably be renewed.

* Firefox gets 85% of it’s cash from Google.  They’d really have no choice but to take Microsoft’s money unless someone really unlikely like Yahoo bought in.

** I would be laughing for weeks if this happened.  I wouldn’t even change the default. 

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Save MySQL

So Monty is complaining that Oracle may end up owning MySQL.  Here’s a reality check: If you sell something for ONE BILLION DOLLARS you have no right to dictate the terms of that product anymore.  You sold it, game over.

Sun’s aquisition of MySQL probably helped sink that ship, unlike the flotilla of private yachts that Monty now owns thanks to Sun’s money.  That ONE BILLION DOLLARS he took in exchange for MySQL must be converted into business value somehow to justify it’s price and Oracle are probably going to do just that.

If he really cared about ‘freedom’ he wouldn’t have taken the big businesses money and sold out.  If he really, really cared he’d take that ONE BILLION DOLLARS and simply buy MySQL back as I am pretty sure it’s not worth now what he got for it.

But no, he sets up a site to try to strongarm Oracle into essentially losing all benifits to an investment valued at ONE BILLION DOLLARS because he doesn’t think they can be trusted to keep it ‘free’.

What an idiot.

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Merry Christmas and happy impending New Year, plus any other ethnic or religious celebrations that are relevant.  Any excuse for a knee’s-up is good as far as I am concerned!

Have a good one.

New post(s) soon!

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I’ve heard some ridiculous claims concerning usability and the command line, my favourite being ‘It’s really usable when you’ve learned how’.  Which is total rubbish when you think about it as anything is easy once you’ve learned it.  Using that logic a machine running (say) Arabic Windows, complete in it’s RTL glory, is just as easy to use as one with English Windows installed as it’s just a case of learning it.  Right.

The thing is the command line is the antithesis of usability.  It’s the exact opposite of where modern computing is going and it is, quite literally, a regression of over 20 years of progress.

Here’s the thing.  A GUI interface is decision based.  You look at what you have and decide a course of action based upon the options presented.  A CLI is knowledge based.  You have to know exactly what you need to type before you type it.  The beauty of a GUI system is you do not need a manual – you do not need to invest weeks learning concepts, commands and other irrelevant arcana. It’s the difference between following roadsigns and trying to get home blindfolded.

For example anyone reasonably confident could find how to change power settings, drive mounts, record some audio or any simple task on Windows (or any decent GUI based OS)  in a few minutes without needing any help, manuals or other assistance.  With the CLI approach you are no longer able to operate on your own volition, instead you have to seek out howto’s, manuals and ask for help in forums.  If there is no documentation or someone to ask then commonly there is no way to solve your issue – more often than not it is impossible to figure out the solution on your own.  Linux essentially strips you of your independence.  And God help you if you have a problem that breaks your internet connection.

If you use Linux you are beholden to the technical elite and their whims.  The depressing part is it is viewed that this can all be solved if only enough documentation is written when everyone else has figured out that documentation should not even be necessary in the first place.  It should be obvious what you need to do.

The Walled Garden

Essentially, and unlike Windows or OSX, the Linux user interface paradigm is a dichotomy.  Instead of having a unified interface that everyone uses you have a two-tier system where you have the ‘real’ Linux users consisting of developers and power users, who rely largely on the CLI, shell scripts, vi and other non discoverable, non intuitive, complicated and extremely difficult to master concepts.  Then you have the normal users who get to use the GUI scraps off of the power users table.

Which is largely the problem.  You have a GUI interface, but it is really just a flimsy facade put up over the CLI underpinnings.  It’s a walled garden of ‘ease of use’ in that as soon as you need to do something outside the remit of what the GUI allows you are immediately dumped into nerd hell in which 99% of the population have no hope of ever understanding.  Stuff which is incredibly simple on other platforms such as installing drivers, installing software, mounting partitions or even changing your screen resolution can quickly turn into half-day Google marathons on Linux if your needs happen to not be covered by the GUI (and thus are outside the garden).

Take NTFS-3G for example.  Last time I tried to use that the volume I tried to mount was marked as dirty.  The GUI tool had no handling exception for this so it just blurted a load of CLI comands into a dialogue box – since it is just a wrapper around the command line version.  You see it all the time in Linux.  Rather than the standard approach of writing an API and interfacing with that large swathes of the GUI is simply calling a CLI command and scraping the result.  No wonder it’s so flaky all the time.

Essentially the problem is that users are viewed as people that need something stupid, something dumbed down, that essentially they have different needs than ‘real’ computer users and as a result you get this system of intellectual apartheid where the ‘dumb users’ only get to play in the padded room and ask an ‘adult’ for help if they have a problem.

Speaking as a user and a developer I am sick of the elitism, of the machismo, of the walled garden.  I don’t want to read howtos.  I don’t want to learn useless, arcane, commands.  I don’t want to spend two days plugging in random commands in the vague hope that my wireless may start working at some point.  It’s not that I don’t know how to use a CLI, it’s more that I have better things to do with my time than fight with the creations of developers too lazy to go the extra mile and understand the whole raison d’être of a modern OS, which is empowering normal users to get stuff done on their own without having to get a degree in CS first.

Update

I saw someone complaining about how it was so difficult to set up a manual IP on Windows with the GUI, how it was so confusing and how Linux was better.  Guess what?  You can easily do this with the Windows CLI also.  As pointed out though, unless you know the exact command and the exact parameters you have no earthly way of figuring it out and if he had gone from Windows, where a GUI is available, to Linux, where it isn’t (or is broken), then he would have failed entirely rather than just taken a bit longer than normal.

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So I was reading the Digg thread on people abusing the Javelin glitch in Modern Warfare 2 – The Javelin is meant to be an anti-armour only weapon but there is a bug where you can pick it up and cause it to explode if you die, killing everyone in a large radius.  Essentially a suicide bomber glitch which is apparently causing huge issues with people racking up massive scores by using it.

Apart from all the posts blaming Microsoft’s shoddy programming (despite the fact they had nothing to do with this game) and the EULA’s are bad, how dare they stop me cheating! rants there was one post which was particularly telling and inspired me to write this post:

I don’t need this issue to bash microsoft. They are a lousy company whose only REAL innovation is to use its size and marketing to steal or buyout ideas. What has microsoft really innovated besides mass marketing of existing ideas?

The question is, what companies actually have any original ideas?  And why are Microsoft held to a different, higher, standard than anybody else?  Why does Microsoft have to be 100% original or face the wrath, yet nobody else needs to be?

The iPod was entirely unoriginal.  There was hundreds of portable MP3 players out before the iPod yet it is deemed as being ‘original’.  Microsoft releases the Zune and apparently they are copying Apple.  Linux is essentially a clean room copy of UNIX, yet apparently Windows is simply a copy of Apple, despite Apple copying Xerox.  Apple releases the iPhone, are they accused of copying Microsoft as Windows Mobile is years older?  OR are they ‘innovating’?

Show me anything significant from a successful company and I will show you the idea that they ’stole’.  The thing is innovation is a rolling, evolutionary process.  You don’t just jump into the market with mk1 entirely new product and sit there – it simply doesn’t work like that.

Company X uses a visual metaphor interface and you are using a CLI interface.  Do you:

1. Damn, they thought of it first, thats a shame as it would greatly enhance our product. 
2. That’s a good idea, lets incorporate that into our product.

Everyone rants about how horrible and innovation stifling patents apparently are, then get outraged when people (that is, Microsoft) does exactly what these patents attempt to stop.

What made the iPod successful was nothing to do with originality, as the Diamond Rio had it beat by a good three years (right).  Check out the scroll-wheel-esque ring in the middle.  Now tell me that the iPod is original.  Pretty damning isn’t it?

The success of the iPod was due to Apple taking an existing idea and doing it well.  The device was aesthetically pleasing, it was incredibly user friendly, it was marketed incredibly well.  It was a great product and although it did not invent the concept of a portable MP3 player it refined and improved the concept immeasurably.  I owned a third gen iPod and bought it for no reason better than it was better than anything else available at the time.  I certainly didn’t rant about how they were unoriginal, and then bought a PMP300 off of ebay to somehow ’stick it to the man’.  That wouldn’t have made sense.

Correct me if I am wrong, but Microsoft is the only company that produces a commercially viable non-Unix based OS.  BSD, Linux, Solaris, OSX etc are all essentially copies of the original Unix.  They are viewed as innovative.  Windows, which has an almost entirely unique heritage, is not.

What is Windows a copy of?  While I do not doubt that there was similarities with the original Xerox implementation and Apple’s implementation, if you run modern OSX beside Windows 7 the systems couldn’t be further apart now.  There are common features that have been traded backwards and forwards between the two, but when it comes to basic implementation the two operate in entirely different ways.  You can get OSX theme packs for Windows, but it is fundamentally impossible to get the UI and interface to operate in the same way.

There are also certain ideas that are inevitable.  Window compositing is one of them – moving window management to the GPU is only logical and largely improves performance.  It also easily enables a whole raft of abilities which would have been incredibly hard to do before – expose, preview thumbnails, rotating cubes, wobbly windows, blending translucency – which all become almost obvious once the GPU comes into play.  Dynamic search, things like Windows search or Spotlight on OSX, are a result of improved computer power.  It’s only because computers now have the power to do it that it is getting included – not because it’s somehow a new innovation.  People often accuse Microsoft of ‘copying’ Spotlight from Apple – ignoring the fact that it’s capabilities were meant to be in WinFS as part of Longhorn well before any Apple announcement.

The claim that Microsoft somehow steals all it’s ideas (and by implication, everyone else is original) is simply an extension of the irrational Microsoft hatred so prevalent in the IT community.  There are utterly no facts to back it up and it’s very easy to argue Microsoft is more innovative than your average company.  It’s become so ingrained into the common psyche that even if Microsoft does it first (ala Compiz) they are still accused of being copycats.  A look at everything that was planned for Longhorn basically set the stage for a large amount of features that are considered de-facto in a modern OS and they came from Microsoft.  Where’s the credit?

To me, you cannot use the term ‘ripoff’ or ‘copy’ if very little of the original remains.  Is every text adventure a ripoff of Zork?  If every raycaster a ripoff of Wolfenstein?  Isn’t Wolfenstien a ripoff too?  Is Duke Nukem 3D a ripoff of Doom?  If you set out to make a copy of something with, at best, cosmetic changes then you are guilty of ripping off someone.  If you take a basic idea and make your own implementation then you are just expanding on the public domain.

Why is everyone allowed to make their own implementation of various ideas except Microsoft?  Why is expanding on an existing idea innovative, unless Microsoft does it?  Why is Open Source allowed to make near carbon copies of proprietary software with impunity – isn’t this a stone’s throw from simple software piracy?

I’ll leave you with a picture comparing ‘Frozen Bubble’, the hit Open Source game and ‘Bust-a-move’, an old commercial game that actually was quite innovative.

Either it is OK or it isn’t.  Anything else is hypocrisy.

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So it has occured to me that I have gone slightly off track with this blog.  My original intention was to engage the FOSS community in debate to try to bring attention to various issues, and also provide a place I can link people to instead of having to go over the same tired arguments repeatedly.

It’s fairly hard being critical without being exclusionary, and far too easy to get carried away with the ‘you all suck’ aspect.  Not that there is anything wrong with angry rants, it’s just not what I wanted to do.

So I am going to start again, with the aim of providing a definitive argument and opinion on a range of challenges and problems facing Open Source in a (hopefully) non-hostile way.  After all success and progress in the FOSS community can only serve to help me in the long run, and the community is in dire need of critics.

I have not yet decided if I am going to keep, archive or wipe all the old posts – largely I’ll be rewriting most of the points in them anyway.

Anyway, coming soon, Piestar II. 

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Did you hear about the new approaching paradigm in computing technology?  It’s all about the thin client cloud computing.  I am getting the feeling we’ve been here before.

It’s really simple.  Look at the architecture of your average CPU.  As well as the registers you commonly have three levels of cache integrated into the CPU.  Then you have system RAM.  If performance is a concern the aim should be to have to use system RAM as little as possible, and to never touch the hard drive if it can be avoided.  It takes about a dozen wasted CPU cycles before the data is fetched from system RAM.  It takes a few million before data is fetched from the HDD.

Yet it’s considered a revolutionary idea to stick everything on the network and deal with utterly horrible latencies plus being at the mercy of your internet connection.  You certainly won’t be able to use ChromeOS as proposed on a train or plane.

Engineers have been fighting latency problems for decades with all sorts of architectural inventions such as on chip memory controllers, mad sized caches, ramdisks etc.  Yet software companies always have this fascination with sticking half your computer in a datacentre in Mumbai.  It makes no logical sense.

I believe the technical term for all this ‘thin client’ mania is a ‘Solution seeking a problem’.

The Inner Platform Effect

ChromeOS also looks to me to be yet another example of the Inner Platform Effect.  “The computer is the browser” is the claim.  You don’t need a complicated OS when all you need is a browser!  But Javascript and XMLHTTPRequest are simply not going to cut it for long.  You’re going to need more advanced languages, better server communication, better graphics libraries (XHTML + CSS is only going to take you so far).  I am sure eventually local app caching (installing) will be introduced and then the aim will be complete – A web browser extended out to be an OS, running on top of an OS.

The problem that should have been solved was the trust issues with app installation on a normal OS.  If you can make sure an app can’t mess with anything it shouldn’t be able to via sandboxing and access control.  It seems to me taking the one advantage web apps have (being unable to mess with the core system) and building a whole OS on top of it is much less sensible than retrofitting that ability onto a normal OS.

Thin Client

Since my main laptop died I have been using my wife’s Samsung NC-10 as my main development machine.  Seriously.  And I haven’t had any issues with it, (except having to press Fn+PgUp/PgDn to get Home/End).  I upgraded the RAM to 2gb (From 512mb) and put Windows 7 on it and unless modern gaming is your aim this will do as a main computer for 99% of people.  And it’s a netbook.  And it cost around £300.

ChromeOS is not going to be out for another year at least.  When it is released I’ll be able to buy (according to Moore’s Law) a new netbook at the same price as this one, but twice as fast.  Google are intent on ignoring this fact, thinking they can sell a range of low-cost, low-powered laptops by making the whole computer a jumped-up web-browser.  The problem is todays low-cost, low-powered netbooks are fast enough to run a full OS, and the ones a year from now are going to be faster than most people’s current computers.

I just really don’t see the public accepting an essentially crippled PC which only runs web-apps, and which only works when you have a network connection, all in the aim of saving a tiny fraction of the cost price of the computer.

Q: But all you’re documents will be automatically backed up to the cloud!
A: Dropbox, or any of a wide range of services can do this.  Plus you get a copy yourself!

Q: But all your apps are available and auto-updated!
A: I think what Google meant to create was Steam for apps.

I have a great idea – it’s called ‘Thin Cupboard Eating’, where instead of wasting space storing things in your house, be it clothes, food or books, instead you save money, buy a smaller house, and simply go to the shops every time you are hungry or want to wear something.  Genius!  Maybe I can sell Google the idea for GoogleHouse!

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