On Fri, 15 Sep 2000, Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote:
> How many Pentiums will it take to exterminate life as we know it?
That depends upon whether or not Algore is elected president. If he's
elected, we'll probably have limits placed on the amount of energy
that we use, including how much electricity we use. This will have
the effect of a sharp reduction in the usage of the Internet by the
average citizen, thus makine the country safer for other totalitarian
politicians, paving the way for the Hillary Monster to get into the
White House. Oh heck, if she does get elected, that alone may
exterminate civilization if people have to look at that ugly face on
TV and in the newspapers enough. Of course, that won't stop the rest
of the world from producting and using pentiums, but it will slightly
lengthen the time it takes for them to do more damage... however,
Intel, wherever it's headquarters end up, may self destruct first as a
result of it's own chips, so, do we really have to worry about this?
;-)
On a more serious note, what we do have to be concerned with is the
possibility of new disk drives eventually becoming scarce, or
extremely expensive for individuals to purchase when they stop
producing PCs, etc. as we know them, and begin producing more and more
network appliances, with all of the software, including OS software,
coming from the so-called ASPs (application service providers). Yes,
I know what you're thinking. Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc. probably
won't stoop to this level, but, do they count enough for manufacturers
to still keep producing hardware for them if Microsoft, and even
manufacturers of commercial UNICES, etc. begin taking that approach
and stop selling software that runs directly on someone's PC via local
storage rather than doing it the ASP way and charging them a monthly
amount to use the OS and software, and file-space, on remote systems
located elsewhere via the 'net? Oh, yeah, and if Algore gets elected,
and electricity use is rationed, and those of us here in the states
can't get enough gasoline or natural gas to power a generator, what
good will our collections of power-hungry real computers over here do
us, other than sitting there beckoning to us to hack on them?
--
R. D. Davis "The best way to gain a true understanding of
rdd_at_perqlogic.com Wile E. Coyote on the Roadrunner cartoons is to
http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd fly, head-first, off a horse into something like
410-744-4900 a fence or a tree; trust me, this works." --RDD
Received on Fri Sep 15 2000 - 19:18:42 BST