
Google Chrome OS is 7 years too late - nreece
http://www.baekdal.com/articles/technology/google-chrome-os/
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ZeroGravitas
I'd suggest the author's (mis)conceptions about the limits of browser based
apps is 7 years out of date. It's not even an explicit argument, it's just an
unspoken assumption that web apps aren't the real thing. Actually, maybe it is
explicitly stated: _"But the browser, being a viewer of HTML5+CSS+JavaScript
is not capable of ‘blowing you away', so we have to move beyond it."_

But, every negative point he raises about web apps (which aren't many or
particularly fundamental) is being worked on feverishly by Google (and Apple,
and others).

But even if you take his argument seriously, he's only saying that rich-client
will be thin, platform-specific wrappers round the APIs of what are
fundamentally cross-platform web apps. Hardly a resounding victory.

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blasdel
Yet another otherwise-insightful essay on ChromeOS that completely ignores the
existence of Google Native Client -- rich native applications that are
integral to the web. ChromeOS doesn't ship without it.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I've not looked into NaCl much but maybe someone can answer me this: running
"real" code in a browser but sandboxed for security? Isn't that Java? This
seems particularly key when they're talking about running Chrome OS on ARM.

~~~
blasdel
Code compiled for NaCL is in a word-aligned subset of machine code that can be
quickly verified before execution and can only generate interrupts to the NaCL
host (no syscalls). It's currently i386, but x86_64 and several ARM variants
are being worked on, hopefully with fat binaries.

The only security hole is timing attacks, because there's no latency hits or
blown caches from having a runtime or GC or even any preconceived notions
about what your language looks like.

