

If you add an OS to Chrome, it's an OS - sjh
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/09/dzuiba_google_chrome_redux/

======
davidw
> a pre-adolescent in-the-brain-out-the-mouth reporting style.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

His writing style plays for cheap laughs by insulting people, but that can
only go so far. After a while, don't people grow up and get tired of that kind
of thing? "Mike Arrington is a doody-head! Hah hah! Poop!"

Were one to look at his actual point, one might also go back 30 years and
wonder if those silly upstarts at Microsoft with their "pee sees" have a
chance against serious mainframes, with the millions of lines of code already
written for them.

~~~
pavlov
_Were one to look at his actual point, one might also go back 30 years and
wonder if those silly upstarts at Microsoft with their "pee sees" have a
chance against serious mainframes, with the millions of lines of code already
written for them._

That comparison would only make sense if mainframes and PCs cost essentially
the same, used the same hardware platform, and the mainframe could run all the
software as the PC (but not the other way around).

~~~
davidw
It's not an exact comparison. What I'm pointing out is that disruptive
innovations are often like this:

> In terms of functionality, web apps have been a regression from their
> desktop counterparts.

They're not _better_ \- at least not initially. They're _good enough_.

Will web apps follow that path and displace desktop apps? Maybe, maybe not,
but it's not as ridiculous a concept as the rant makes it out to be.

~~~
whughes
His point is not only that web apps are inferior. His point is that web apps
are _not_ good enough. Case in point:

 _TechCrunch goes on to report: "Don’t worry about those desktop apps you
think you need. Office? Meh. You’ve got Zoho and Google Apps. You won’t miss
Office."

Ah, yes. Corporate IT workers everywhere have to port decades of esoteric
business logic codified into Excel macros to Google Spreadsheets, but the real
problem is, what are they going to do after lunch? Have you ever tried to use
Google Docs for any serious task? In the words of a true hacker, it's like
trying to build a bookcase out of mashed potatoes. The Microsoft Office
institution will not easily be overthrown by a bunch of jokers writing
JavaScript._

Web apps may be disruptive, but that doesn't make them more useful or more
likely to take off.

~~~
davidw
Maybe he's right, maybe he's not, but calling people who think differently a
bunch of morons isn't what makes his case.

------
pufuwozu
It doesn't seem like a lot of people have connected the parts together yet.

Google Gears, Native Client and Chrome are all parts to making the web MORE
than what it already is. Think about it. At the moment we are constrained to
HTML, CSS and JavaScript. With the technologies being put together by Google
you can easily have downloadable native applications that run through Chrome.

I'm doubting that Google is just going to make another net kiosk distribution.
Making an operating system for themselves is how they are going to really get
their web technology out in the open.

~~~
trezor
So basically what you are saying is that google plan to "embrace and extend"
the web?

While this may be a step which is required to bring the web as a platform
forwards, I'm not sure I like the sound of that either.

~~~
jsonscripter
Sounds fine to me. They aren't locking you into anything. All their
technologies are open and free, it's just that no other companies can offer
Google's quality and breadth.

~~~
gaius
That's not really true. Google's range of products is tiny compared to
Microsoft's, and while Microsoft's quality is variable (partly due to their
wide range) it's not the case that they're universally bad.

Microsoft rely on their closed source, Google rely on physically owning the
servers their services rely on. Will you be able to run your own set of Google
services on your own kit, or on a third-party VM host and retain the full
functionality of Chrome OS? I doubt that somehow.

~~~
davidw
If it's anything like Android, it _will_ be open enough (well, completely
open, actually) that you can hack it to make it do what you want. You could
hack it to work with Yahoo or Microsoft, or DedaSys, for that matter.

~~~
gaius
Well, OK, I have an old Mac SE/30 at home. It's a fine machine for basic word
processing etc. I'm running Word 5.1 on it, how old is that? Yet despite it
being closed source, Microsoft, utterly unsupported, yadda yadda, it works
fine. In 20 years, will I be able to have my own completely independent Google
Docs running on a Unix that doesn't exist yet, in a datacentre operated by a
company that doesn't exist yet, and have all my old docs still there?

Basically, I don't think this has been very thought through.

------
alexgartrell
I enjoyed this article a lot. It's nice to see that there are others avoiding
the Google koolaid.

I DO want to see local apps accessible via the browser though. That has a lot
of potential to be cool.

edit: local apps as in hosted locally, whether on the same computer or on the
home network somewhere. Basically, where your data is your data and no one
else's :)

~~~
jacquesm
Why on earth would you want your applications running locally to show in the
browser, that's just another layer in between slowing things down and offering
no extra level of service ?

'Applications' running on your local machine that are web centric can be
reached via the localhost url, everything else knows how to talk to the
display engine already (and at a much higher clip than a browser would be able
to offer).

~~~
alexgartrell
Because I want people to be used to accessing their own stuff (media in
particular) via their browser for when home media servers inevitably become a
big deal and people use a youtube-like (or HTML 5 Video tag)-like interface to
access their stuff.

There are absolutely limitations to using the browser as an interface to apps,
but you gain in that "Remote Desktop" becomes trivial to implement and that
you can have one expensive server and a bunch of thin-clients all over your
house.

It's just the way I think it's headed, and I think that's pretty cool.

------
mahmud
_Proof that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't punch him in the dick
without being brought up on assault and battery charges._

This phrase, alone, makes me wanna buy a Real News Paper subscribtion. I never
read such profanity reading the Washington Post.

Why perform inexpensive literary contortions, and dive face first into pie
just to make me laugh, Ted Dziuba?

------
trezor
This had me laughing:

 _The canonical example of failure in tech journalism is TechCrunch, a blog
that once declared Google's MapReduce to be a system that "reduced the links
found on the web into a map that search algorithms could run over." Yes, this
will do nicely._

While you could say that The register obviously would have an "agenda" to
discredit other competing sites, I honestly find The register, despite the
snarky style, much more informative and useful than TechCrunch.

~~~
greyman
TC have been publishing good articles, mediocre articles and quite bad
articles. But calling them failure is laughable, I think it's a result of envy
combined with fear. TC is their serious competitor, and they know it. If for
nothing else, they are usually able to break stories sooner than others. IMHO,
Register should better find a ways to improve themselves, their work is not
that impressive either.

~~~
theoneill
It's not The Register that has an obsession with TechCrunch, but this
particular writer.

~~~
zimbabwe
Dziuba doesn't have an obsession with TechCrunch, but with snark in general.
Once upon a time he wrote balanced articles criticizing things he didn't like.
Then he realized that the more negative he was, the more hits he received, and
like many weak-minded tech writers before him, he sold out for the sake of a
minor celebrity status.

------
4chan4ever
Dziuba's a clever writer to be sure, but to me, part of being a 'professional'
journalist is that you refrain from the ad hominem. Hurling clever insults is
easy there are a million writers who can do it but to create a piece of
informative, interesting, relevant content, not so much. Calling out Michael
Arrington like that...was kind of unprofessional. But I do like Dziuba's
writing and also of course Verity Stob.

------
froo
I was agreeing up with him to this point.

 _"Keep whackin' away on that Pareto Principle and let us all know how it
turns out. In the meantime, I'm going to go play a few rounds of Counterstrike
on my Windows-based PC"_

That's one way to kill your own argument about technical knowledge
superiority. Counterstrike? seriously? Windows can be forgiven... but
counterstrike?

~~~
trezor
How does a preference in games (or, more likely, choosing a game absolutely
everyone would know about for a sarcastic remark) in any way relate to
technical knowledge?

~~~
froo
Look, I agree it was a sarcastic remark - but if you're going to take any sort
of high ground (which is why I used the technical superiority comment, even
though it was probably a poor choice of words) to sum up your argument, at
least use something that doesn't have connotations of overzealous teens whose
primary goal in life is to tell each other to F off.

It demeans his argument from a scathing piece (which I mostly agree with) to a
blatant rant...

~~~
trezor
I take it you have not seen this Halo commercial then :)

<http://www.break.com/index/best-halo-3-trailer.html>

