Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer said on Tuesday that lines between on-premise software and Internet services are blurring, an industry shift the company is embracing. During his talk, Ballmer said many websites can be described as ‘click to run’, where a service is delivered via a Web site but runs on a PC. “I do think that we’re in a transition where software goes from something that’s in its pre-Internet day to something we call Live (Microsoft’s hosted services), where you have click-to-run capability on a Web site… But software will still execute on a PC,” Ballmer said in response to questions.
Isn’t that exactly what ActiveX and Java Applets do?
You go to a website, they download and run. Java runs in a safe sandbox, however ActiveX seems to be the most popular malware distribution channel.
Is this ‘live’ thing something like ActiveX 2.0 or “safe” ActiveX? ActiveX.NET?
Anyone have any substance to go with the buzzwords?
Is this ‘live’ thing something like ActiveX 2.0 or “safe” ActiveX? ActiveX.NET?
Picture a credit card reader attached to your USB port with a little red light that flashes and requires you to swipe your card every time you want to type a letter or IM someone.
Actually, a services delivery model for software isn’t that far fetched, it exists already in the commercial space though mostly in hosted models or an annual fee-based model for software (stop paying and it stops working). On paper there are advantages for customers (pay for what you require, expense a service vs. capital expenditure for software, simplified asset management / license compliance) and vendors (annuity revenue stream versus one-time license revenue, simplified R&D versus chasing version upgrades) but still has some work ahead of it to become widely accepted.
Consumers may be a harder sell, or possibly an easier one, depending on how it’s positioned and implemented. But I don’t doubt for a minute that those USB card readers with the flashing red light will be very stylish, and conveniently work with XBox 360’s as well.
‘internet apps’ suck right now. Limited functionality, generally slow on modest PCs (granted, not much of a problem), pretty much require fast broadband connections to be usable, not reliable… they have aways to go before I would even consider using them…
Edited 2006-10-11 00:27
Someone explain the uses of this again? Except of course to get the glut of unemployed web page designers from the late 90’s a reason to collect a paycheck again.
Let’s break down Web 2.0
Do I need an online version of Word? No.
Do I need an online version of Excel? Hell no.
But it’s free! So f-‘ing what, tightwad. So is OpenOffice….download it you lazy bastard.
So that’s the schpeel. At least 64bit will eventually be useful, AJAX and Web 2.0 is another example of hype going nowhere.
The trouble is, who wants and needs it? For many businesses, having someone else handle a problem their business is not made for, but needs done, makes sense. For normal software that an end user…uses, how does it make sense? It seems like it adds time and bandwidth use, yet does not benefit the said end user.
Oh, wait, it might benefit MS, because they’ve wanted a subscription model is place for years, and if they release new software only through this method, they might get that.
But, first, they’ve got to soften us up, and make us think a real change is coming. Really, new software niches are being filled, rather than old software changing places.
P.S. I saw an edit button. I’m editing! What glorious thing happened, here?
Edited 2006-10-11 02:51
What is Balmers PC serving?
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060913 Fedora/1.5.0.7-1.fc5 SonyEricssonT68/R502 (Google WAP Proxy/1.0) pango-text