System iNetwork

Roger, I'll reply when blogs become popular! .. smile.

Great googly moogly! What were these boneheads thinking?

In 1995 IBM was thinking that OS/2 had a chance at bouncing Windows off the
desktop, and withholding VARPG support from Windows was at least
consistent with that hope and plan. In hindsite, we can see the futility of
IBM trying to dislodge Windows from the desktop with OS/2, but at the
time the picture wasn't so clear.

In 2007 there isn't much desktop operating system competition,
but the One Laptop Per Child initiative
which began at MIT, which is based on a very impressive low-cost laptop,
which uses a small-footprint version of Linux, is something I want to keep
tabs on. As more and more robust applications are deployed over the Internet,
the CPU, memory, disk, and OS requirements of PC's could
drop dramatically.

That would be an interesting turn on Microsoft, where the majority of their
revenues, resources, and infrastructure pertain to the development
and support of operating systems, middleware, and applications that have ever
increasing resource requirements.

Microsoft of course is developing an infrastructure for Web based
applications, but there obviously must be some turmoil within the company as
they try to balance the interests of those who are supporting and promoting
traditional desktop environments and applications, which is
their bread and butter, with the bigger trend toward Web based applications.
In that sense, IBM may have a slight advantage with their focus being set primarily
on server based solutions.

Hindsite is easy. What about the future? Will low-cost laptops, with open-source
operating systems gain momentum over high-powered Windows-based workstations?
Will Web-based applications continue gaining momentum over desktop-base
applications? Will commodity-like Web-based services (Software as a Service),
continue gaining momentum over in-house based systems?

This is reminiscent of the height of the dot com bomb to be. All of the hyped web sites unabashedly required IE 5+. Reason? They were doing this allegedly hot web stuff in little Windows programs called ActiveX.

So is there more of that stuff going on? Sure. I understand webforms is not what it is in other browsers than what Microsoft does with, again, its Windows OS with IE. As for AJAX and the like, Google and commercial vendors have to offer cross platform libraries to deal with the differences between IE and others.

Between that and other things, doesn't surprise me to see more of the dot com hype stuff coming from someone who thinks the world comes to them on their terms.

I use Netscape 7 on my main posting computer (this one I'm posting with) and Firefox on my internet development computer, and quite frankly most of what Netscape 7 with Javascript off doesn't render is the reason I stick with the old stuff that is manipulation resistant from internet sites shoving stuff at me I don't want to see.

But as far as Wal-Mart goes, there are government sites also that require IE and a ruckus is raised whenever the site is needed and people find out.

This is always going to be a "can I get away with doing Windows features stuff in a browser without those people resisting assimilation finding out?"

But as always, cloaked with an excuse of "We'll do something about them in version 2".

rd

Hey Roger -

You wrote:

Back in 95, I went to Toronto to see how progress was coming with IBM's VisualAge for RPG. This was back during IBM's very staunch OS/2 commitment period. You remember those days, back when virtually no one was using OS/2 but IBM.

Ugh, the old OS/2 days. The problem back then was that OS/2 required too much horsepower. I recall a column by Dvorak that suggested IBM configure 1,000 of it's most powerful PS/2 systems with OS/2 and send them free, with no strings attached, to 1,000 industry magazine editors. His point was that there would be a flurry of coverage, as editors (who often had underpowered machines) would start using OS/2 and see how superior it was to Windows.

Of course, that kind of guerrilla marketing was beyond the company then, and now. No, no, no... they had to spend many times that amount for dancing nun commercials. And weren't those effective!

Roger,

They must have read your blog because I have no problem with Wal-Mart's site using FireFox (version 2.0.0.2).