On Mon, 2005-11-14 at 19:34 -0600, John Thompson wrote: > On 2005-11-14, Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Mon, 2005-11-14 at 14:34 -0700, Robin Laing wrote: > > > >> I would hate to be that student working on my term paper that needs to > >> be handed in tomorrow when the network connection goes down due to a > >> problem with one of the many hops that I have to work through. > > > > What do you do if there is a power cut? > > Uninterruptible power supply? Mine lasts through the vast majority of > outages, and gives me plenty of time to save my work if it looks like th > outage will last longer than the battery.
But few people actually have such an arrangement because outages are rare and usually short-lived. If internet service was as consistent as power there would be few people who would worry too much about outages - if its cheap enough just have a backup connection. > I think there will always be amrket for stand-alone software, for this and > other reasons. There is a market for stand-alone power - batteries, but for most power uses people use the grid. If there is added value in the convenience of web based applications such as not having to think about data back up and storage, linking to other related information sources and anytime anywhere access without having to lug sizeable hardware around, it will happen and its also likely to define the world standards in the information structures used. Its why ODF is a watershed. If Google and a few large players like IBM get web based office apps based on ODF established in the next couple of years, that will be the standard and MS XML will be dead in the water since it doesn't exist yet and neither does a web based office suite that can use it. OOo technology is the best starting point for such apps because its available to many players now and ODF provides the means of integrating with other non-office web based applications. Sure people will still have laptops running Office XP with .doc. .XLS .ppt etc but that is not driving the future, that is a legacy of to-day and the past. -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMSL --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
