In much the same way that HAL, the menacing computer in the film 2001, was supposed to be a superior computer to any IBM, because it's letters were all one better than the then world's greatest computer manufacturer IBM, must have been at the back of Larry Ellison mind when coming up with the naff acronym nc (network computer). Whether or not he thought it was two better is either pure madness or complete arrogance, but either way it's more than a mild coincidence.

John Barnes ventures a timid opinion as to whether online everything and dumb terminals are necessarily a fantastic idea

In my opinion it's at least two or three times worse than the PC and certainly ten times more menacing than HAL. In fact it may well make HAL look like a complete Dick Van Dyke of a computer, all smiles and no real substance, whilst it will become an utter child catcher of a machine, friendly at first and but a real enemy within; to draw out a poorly thought out and painful Disney analogy. Why? Because it will make all of us slaves to the telecoms companies who regularly take tea and Mr Kipling cakes with the devil. Just when you were thinking that the internet, for all it's faults and pretentious hippy evangelists was starting to liberate networks in datacoms version of the love and peace movement, the nc comes a long and bursts the happy bubble. True to form the press are all full of how wonderful it all is and no-one seems to have stopped and asked some fundamental questions such as 'why replace a throbbing turbo charged machine for an under powered pile of crap that relies on the telecoms network for all it's intelligence?' Or Why pay $500 for a box of nothing when you've got a perfectly good networked computer already? But after all the press thought Frank Bough only took his coke in liquid form until he discovered the real thing! For corporates the questions are even more pointed as many of you will have spent the best part of the last ten years replacing all those costly and unreliable dumb terminals with powerful networked PCs only to find that it didn't quite fit in with Mr E's vision of the future. Obviously what you are going to do now is through is all away, put NC's on the desktop and try, unsuccessfully, along with all the other suckers to buy shares in BT, Mercury, AT&T and all the other telecoms companies that make money. Maybe I'm talking out of turn as the concept is great. A super cheap computer that chucks out all the over blown operating systems we have all bemoaned for the last decade, in place of a micro kernel operating system that is truly open and relies on component based programs and applets instead of piles of apps stuffing your now redundant hard drive. But where does all the functionality come from? The net. And how difficult is it to get onto successful sites like Netscape or Yahoo on a Friday afternoon when all the Californians are looking for colostomy bags and silicon implants? About as easy as finding a Californian without a colostomy bag or a silicon implant - that's how easy. So will the machine really cost $500? I'd say that the running costs alone will make the old chubby, bloated, passΘ PC look like a free gift, and the connectivity costs and on-line time will start to resemble the spreadsheet from hell as you buckle under the weight of demand after demand. Clearly the big vendors see the PC as a technology to pass down the line as production and distribution costs get bigger and margins get smaller, and the nc must look like a gift horse for them. on top of this they all know that communications is the market to conquer and grow the empires of the next century around. Sadly for you, they'll do it worth your help unless you think carefully. Which would definitely put a different twist on the familiar 'serf the net'.