For the past month, I've been helping my parents get broadband. Their rural exchange is finally enabled, and I've guided them through the joys of choosing supplier, speed of capped or uncapped service, modems, routers and wireless networking. There'll be a short pause while BT comes up with a date when the planets are in the right conjunction and the gnomes in the exchanges can press the button. Then I turn up, plug in, configure and test. Then comes the great dance of the patches, the ritual summoning of the Firefox, a sprinkling of anti-malware packages, a spot of remote management magic -- and I can steal softly away until something goes wrong. I give it a week.
I'd guess that most ZDNet UK readers know this phenomenon, which for the sake of argument I'll call FAFSS -- Friends And Family Support Syndrome. The best you can say about it is that it brings people together and the grateful recipients generally supply beer, but it masks a very serious problem. For those who don't have FAFSS-qualified expertise on tap and can't afford £40 an hour for decent support, there's no alternative to going it alone. The result is endless frustration for the users, and zombie armies, worldwide worm farms and endless misery for everyone else. Computers that don't work properly are one thing: computers that don't work properly and are 150 milliseconds away from yours quite another.
You may have read my colleague Andrew Donoghue's report on the unwillingness of ISPs to take responsibility for the wellbeing of their customers. This is scandalous. Even if you're buying managed connectivity for a hundred thousand seats you shouldn't be buying your bits from an ISP that is careless about all its customers. It's like buying fresh water from a company that lets tons of sewerage slosh around in the pipework next to the purification plant.
There is a solution, and here's the second scandal -- it has the potential to be very profitable, not least for the ISPs. Yet nobody's talking about it: you can scan the literature of the industry sector concerned as much as you like and you'll get nowhere. The magic phrase: thin client in the home. With broadband and ultra-cheap high performance processors, the time is right for domestic managed systems, where the user buys not just a connection but a complete environment.
History is on its side. People love IT appliances. Amstrad knew this in the 80s when it made millions of word processors that benefited from the extreme cheapness of outdated 8-bit PC technology in disguise. Personal video recorders? Undercover PCs that will still be selling by the bucketload when media centre PCs are sitting just beneath the Ford Edsel in the business school textbooks of the future. So what's wrong with PCs disguised as working, useful, reliable, Internet enabled devices?
Talkback
Yep,
And how long would it be until the use of these were
mandatory for all citizens. How long would it be until
microsoft was made the 'state system' with all other '
operating systems being illegal. How long after that'
would possession of a linux system or software would
be a felony. How long would it take for possession of
regular 'general purpose' machines become a felony.
How long would it take for Balmer, Gates, and company to literally drool with the possibilities of your advocacy. As if they had not thought of it themselves.
Who knows, maybe YOU are their mouthpiece!?
This is the very matter what I've been thinking for sometime. I know there are many people who only need a black box to communicate via the Internet rather than a versatile but complicated personal computer. For successfully introducing this appliance, the service vendor must keep aside such words like "computer" or "install," also they should have the answer to this question: "What is the difference between your service and Prestel?"
You can run your PC from a USB key http://www.goosee.com/puppy/flash-puppy.htm .You can run your PC from a CD http://www.mirror.ac.uk/mirror/ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V3.6-2004-08-16-EN.iso
Do either of those fix the problem ? Significantly reduce the problem ? Make the PC cheaper ?
A well crafted article to further demonize the general purpose computer.
By stroking the egos of those who are technically inclined, feeding off frustration with that FAFSS nonsense, all the while writing in a friendly buddy buddy tone.
The idea is to have those who are capable sell the system to those who arent. Soon closed system ISPs will appear. Incrementally we will move towards the world Anonymous posted about.
In the mean time we would see no increase in security and quality of software written, fraud would continue to rise, and more and more violations and abuse of privacy and data by corporations, government officials and law enforcement.
Wow! I had no idea George Orwell was posting on here!
I think theres a difference between stating that PC's are too complicated for the average user, and that maybe a different approach is needed, and advocating the hiring of the gestapo.
While we're on the subject, anyone complaining of ever more problematic PC's, couldn't possibly be working in the employ of the Gates creature. After all, the issues mentioned were around endless patches, AV, upgrades, incompatibility, the need for firefox. Would a mouthpiece for MS be saying that these problems exist, or telling us they would be fixed in the next release?
I think some of you need to go on a march or something. or else possibly explain why the issues discussed aren't causing a problem, or even suggest an alternative?