Thick or thin

Danno Ferrin blogged on the overuse of thin clients when sometimes thick are more appropriate. He describes a number of useful criteria to use when starting to think about which client style to use.

But he stops too soon. While he mentions at the end that WebStart is a new friend, he didn't attach this to thoughts on the scale of deployment. A lot of people use thin clients to avoid sneakernet install issues for think clients, but in reality JavaWebStart is solving this problem now for think clients.

But one of the larger problems in my mind, that Danno didn't mention, is UIs for which the data presented is driven by events other than the user. Stock trading consoles that want to display dynamically updating quote information. Power grid managment wants to display real-time loading, current,voltage, frequency samples. Sure you can solve these problems with auto-refresh, but that has its own cost in extra reads (solving for accuracy) or out of date data (solving for bandwidth). Not to mention that the actual data that is updated is way way smaller than the whole page refresh. Again, bandwidth.

Another case was a web calendar I was looking at lately. Setting up a group for cross referencing calendars to find availability, required flipping through piles of screens to find a person's calendar, go to another to add it to the group, go to the search again to find the next person. Came to something like 4 screens per person added. Each with HTTP page loading times. Took forever. Totally crazy. Compare to some fat clients doing similar things in one dialog.

Some thick clients are a joy to use, while their thin counterparts make me want to use another product.

[Comments from my previous blog]

1. a reader left...

Sunday, 23 November 2003 2:12 pm

 

Fat vs Thin is certainly a valid argument to have, but I think that most discussions rest of certain assumptions that dont have to hold true. The biggest of these is the assumption that every user action in a thin client requires a HTTP round-trip. Smart use of javascript and HTML makes it relatively easy to avoid these things - the web calendar you mention is a classic. The real argument there is, as Danno puts it, the amount of data coming down the pipe. In my spare time atm I'm working on a training diary aimed at rowers, available at http://training.coxless.com, which has a MS Money style interface to viewing a diary, and works (I think) very well.

Having said all that, there are plenty of times when a thick client works wonders - but the biggest argument from my point of view is the number of users. Having not too long ago finished a contract where a thick client was deployed to 60-70 users, and even at those numbers, deployment was an issue (mind you they refused to accept my advice regarding webstart).

Dmitri Colebatch

2. glen martin left...

Monday, 24 November 2003 10:18 am

 

Well, ok, there's javascript, but I think that is blending the two styles of interface. If there's behaviour running on the client, it can't precisely be called thin, can it?

Though I might be accused of splitting hairs here. Many seem to say thin when they really mean broswer-based. The problem is, if javascript (or whatever javascript alternative you care to name)isn't present or is disabled, what happens? True thin clients wouldn't have client-side behaviours.

But I think your closing thought perfectly underscores my thinking: Despite well known solution to the sneakernet problem, folks continue to choose thin vs thick for reasons of installation, rather than for more credible ones.

One reason of which is size of data in the pipe.

Given JavaWebStart, folks have the opportunity to make choices for more relevant reasons, which should in theory result in greater diversity of interfaces out there.

Derivation vs. residual knowledge

I am not a lawyer, and these comments do not constitute legal opinion, my own, my employer's, or any others'.
 
This post is not related directly and makes no comment on other timely happenings. I'm just following a train of thought.
 
I find myself wondering at the intersection of 'derived work' and 'residual knowledge'. SFAIK, on changing employment the future use of residual knowledge (eg. skills, not proprietary facts) is protected in at least some jurisdictions. LGPL source (to pick an example not precisely at random) is proprietary in the sense that there is an owner, and used under license.

But does 'derivation' require that the source be in front of you? Or that you are remembering the original source? Or thinking about it? Surely once you get to the point that your are remembering that laying out a solution using some pattern is useful, that is only residual knowledge, even if you conceptualised that pattern through looking at or hearing about some source.

Supposing residual knowledge rules could apply, and if only *some* jurisdictions protect residual knowledge, this could lead to a truly unpleasant situation in which *where* the code is typed becomes important. Blech!
The application of residual knowledge law in cases in which there isn't an employment contract is best left to those with more fortitude than myself.

Openness, public domain and SCO

Anne Thomas Manes was writing about various shades of gray in the openness of
Java and C#, and wrote [ed: this link is broken, Anne's old blog is apparently no more. Her new blog doesn't seem to have the old posts, reminiscent of my own blog migration pain.]

Public domain means open. It is the opposite of proprietary. Open source isn't nearly as open as public domain -- as illustrated by the SCO lawsuit regarding Linux. The fact that there is a license -- even an open source license -- means that someone owns the intellectual property in Linux. SCO is claiming that it owns some of that intellectual property, and it is demanding that companies pay for the right to use it.

While I think she has here and elsewhere in her comment accurately reflected the difference between public domain and proprietary,  the way I've taken her comment on SCO isn't quite accurate.

I'm not a lawyer, don't work for SCO or IBM, and don't play any of these
roles on TV.

While public domain is the antithesis of ownership, I don't think it would in any way have shielded anyone from the SCO lawsuit. Taking the SCO complaint at face value, just for the sake of argument: had some company, "HAL" perhaps, released code it licensed from SCO into the public domain, that
would in no way have protected HAL from SCO's wrath.

Nor would those who picked up the supposed public domain code have been protected. If I put stolen property on my curbside with a 'free' sign, you who pick it up still have received stolen property. Likely you wouldn't be charged for this unwitting act, but I would. And if you wanted to keep the stolen property, you could then be charged some fee.


The point here is that SCO's claim has nothing to do with the property having shown up in open source - it is to do with the property having been used by HAL outside of contracted context. SCO's ownership is the same no matter whether the contested use is open source, closed source, private transaction, employee theft, whatever.

I'm still not a lawyer.

[Comments from my previous blog]

1. a reader left...

Tuesday, 16 September 2003 5:25 pm

A de jure standard would make a huge difference in the SCO lawsuit -- except that Linux isn't a de jure standard. A de jure standard is public domain by law. Once the intellectual property is defined as public domain by an international standards body, no one can claim ownership of the IP. That's why the ISO standardization is such an important factor in regards to C# and CLI. Linux may be open source, but it is not in the public domain. This is one of the risks associated with open source -- your open source provider supplies no guarantee of indemnification if someone comes along and sues you for violating their IP. Hence SCO can sue any Linux user. This isn't possible with C# and CLI.

Anne Thomas Manes [amanes@burtongroup.com]

2. glen martin left...

Tuesday, 16 September 2003 6:40 pm

A standards body can try to put a technology in the public domain, but if the body doesn't own the technology in question it isn't then public domain. While there may be a difference for the end-user, for HAL or the standards body there would be some difficulty.

I believe there may be a situation along these lines with respect to some of the MS contributions to standards bodies like ECMA and W3C. If only portions of the standards are donated, the public domain release by the standards body isn't all that effective in permitting free (that is, unconstrained) use.

3. a reader left...

Wednesday, 17 September 2003 7:16 am

But that's the major difference between an international standards body, such as ISO, and a vendor consortium, such as W3C. W3C has no right to put technology into the public domain. W3C doesn't own the IP in the W3C standards. The vendors and/or people that contribute to W3C maintain their IP rights. Hence the recent controversy about royalty free and reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) licensing practices.

But ISO is different. Any technology contributed to an ISO standard must be donated to the public domain, and once the technology has been standardized, ISO provides indemnification (protection against lawsuits).

But I agree with you regarding your caveat about what portion of the technology is in the public domain. That's why I've been careful to say that only C# and CLI are international standards -- but .NET is a proprietary framework built on the C#/CLI standard. And that's why I'm suggesting that we really need a non-proprietary framework built on C#/CLI that has no IP-encumbrances from Microsoft. Currently, Mono has cloned a number of Microsoft-owned .NET classes (ASP.NET, ADO.NET, SOAP, etc.). I'm suggesting that a new set of frameworks should be built on top of the Mono base that aren't based on Microsoft-proprietary IP.

Anne Thomas Manes [amanes@burtongroup.com]

Quote of the week

Responding to Bush's request to add certain terrorism-related crimes to the list of those for which the death penalty is available, Deborah Pearlstein of Lawyers Committee for Human Rights said

"When you're dealing with an enemy that has made suicide attacks its weapon of choice, expanding the death penalty seems like a particularly counterproductive proposal."

McNealy on California employment expense

There's a million rules that make the cost of operating here just off the charts.

Well, I said my industry was perhaps an exception in that services are not delivered primarily locally.  As usual, my blog is about my opinions, not those of my company. And sometimes it isn't even my opinion, just a thought experiment. This is perhaps a topic of greater divergence than others.

Business competitiveness

California seems to be moving towards mandatory health insurance for all employers with more than 20 employees.  Accompanied by the usual hand-wringing about some California company will see labour costs increase, hurting them competitively.

Continuing my anti-media rant, here are two aspects to this story I expected to see mention of in the article, but didn't.


First is that California (and probably plenty of other places too) is undergoing a shift from manufacturing to service jobs. Service jobs by and large deliver services locally. So while some pizza chain whines about having to sell 150,000 more pizzas to cover the insurance cost, so will his competitors. Somehow I don't think they'll all be able to increase the number of pizzas they sell, but worry not, they can all raise the price of their pizzas by a buck or so and not have to worry overmuch that UPS will start bringing in out-of-state pizzas.


Actually, maybe if they all start covering health insurance, they can sell more pizzas total. 80 odd years ago Henry Ford realised that paying his workers more would allow them to spend more, drive more money into the economy, and increase the number of cars he could sell. If pizza workers are spending less on health care, chances are they'll spend more on services (including pizzas either first or second hand). Perhaps the pizza chain in question won't sell 150,000 more pizzas, but they will likley see some increase.


But anyway, there is no competitive challenge to increased labor costs in a largely service based economy.


The second missing point is that research indicates that universal health care covers everyone for less total money than the current US helathcare system. This sounds insane, but the administration costs of the current US system factor as a relatively large fraction of the total bill. I mean costs associated with the multiplicity of insurance companies, variations betwen plans, doctors harassing insurance to get paid, etc ...

The $1,059 per capita spent on health care administration was more than three times the $307 per capita in paperwork costs under Canada’s national health insurance system ... [accounting for] at least 31 percent of total U.S. health spending in 1999 compared to 16.7 percent in Canada.

"Hundreds of billions are squandered each year on health care bureaucracy, more than enough to cover all of the uninsured, pay for full drug coverage for seniors, and upgrade coverage for the tens of millions who are under-insured"

I don't know ... it seems to me that the drive to required health coverage is a good thing. The current proposal falls short, though. To achieve the savings of the Canadian model, they'd have to extend health coverage to *everyone*, employed or not, along with rationalisations of plans and administration. Central administration saves effort for the administrator, and the doctor/hospital/pharmacy. The current California initiative increases coverage, but not enough to achieve the savings of universality.

All this having been said, in IT the services are in fact delivered remotely. My industry will be affected, even if the bulk of services is not. But I don't care, universal coverage still makes sense, and more sense than the current bills.  Of course, I'm an alien.

[Comments from my previous blog]

1. a reader left...

Wednesday, 25 February 2004 11:11 am

 

are you talking about having health coverage like other countries do? That everyone has coverage, employed or not for free. I like that idea. I just spoke with my Pennsylvania insurance company, and you wanna know how expensive health coverage is. That's y im on here now, looking for something cheaper

joe [joe@aol.com]

Dying for crisp thinking

Are media correspondents idiots?

A report in the San Francisco Chronicle talks about the rate of homeless deaths in San Francisco and elsewhere.

Now I want to be absolutely clear: this blog isn't about the homeless. I have nothing but sympathy for the plight of many of them. Can't say all, because I don't think there is any group that is homogenous enough to make a blanket claim about. But many. Most.

This blog is about the media, who can't seem to figure out what the news is.

This article says there are 169 homeless deaths a year. How newsworthy is this? I don't know if this is a 50%, 5% .5% or what mortality rate. Ok, buried in the article is a broad estimate of the population, 8,000 - 15,000. So 169 is between 1.1 and 2.2%. Hmmm. That doesn't sound so bad. I mean, no I wouldn't want them to die per se, but everyone does, and dying at the rate of <2% of a population per year doesn't sound out of line.

The article also mentions that there are far fewer homeless deaths elsewhere, eg. 37 in Boston. But again, how many homeless are in Boston, where it is bloody cold for a good part of the year? Previous articles have discussed a migration of homeless to SF due to weather and liberal policies. I have no idea what the relative number of homeless are between SF and Boston.

That's the point of my rant. I don't know, and the article singularly failed to tell me.

The headline for this article should have been "Homeless die at 4 times the rate of the larger population" if they wanted it to be truly useful. Or whatever the real number is.

The peak of insanity here is mention of 8,000 deaths a year total in SF. Wow! There are fewer homeless deaths than non-homeless? I knew home ownership was stressful, but hadn't realised it increases mortality rate. Streets, here I come!

Flipping idiots.