kaled - 9:25 am on Jul 23, 2008 (gmt 0)

Some technologies have nothing like the potential that some people claim of them. For instance, whilst nano-materials have a future, nanobots will never achieve what there proponents claim is their potential because some things are mathematically impossible.

So this raises the question, why do such ludicrous claims get made? Answer : To get research money to achieve that which is possible. Unfortunately, people who lack sufficient knowledge of Maths and Physics believe and repeat these claims and predictions, often without even asking the question "would this be better?".

The idea that people will opt for "dumb-terminals" and centralized data storage and use wireless links (cloud-computing) to access both data and programs is just absurd. In addition to difficulties with respect to bandwidth if everyone worked this way (i.e. response times would be poor) there is no significant advantage to this system over current computers but there are many disadvantages.

Incidentally, the main cause of slow bootups is bloatware. I can compile around 100,000 lines of code in 2 seconds (in memory). As problems go, that is probably bigger than any bootup process should be i.e. computers should be able to bootup using less than two seconds of CPU time - that just leaves file access.

Kaled.