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Re: Thin clients, biologists, and National Semiconductor

From: Doug Sutherland <>
Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 21:15:49 -0800

On Thu, 02 Nov 2000, Matt Carlson wrote:

> The guest speaker was the CEO of National Semiconductor

Did you get any sample ICs? <g>

> asked 'What about wearable computers?' and the answer was that 
> they are 'a bit ahead of there time' and 'not very socialy 
> acceptable' but nice for 'industrial work'..

He is clueless. Wearable is the ultimate assistant, and 
integrates all of the various gadgetry. I will never touch
a PDA or pager or mp3 player or GPS receiver or digital
camera again. Eventually I want to add telephone to the 
list and make my wearable screen calls, look you up in a 
database, and ask you if you are selling me carpets.

> When I started stripping down

Was that an R rated IT session??? LOL

> I acutaly had to show him the SBC

Take your wearable to Japan any they will flock around 
you. They go absolutely bananas over this stuff. People
would not leave me alone. I almost needed security 
people in order to leave after doing tech talks and 
demos. I have used my jacket to switch on my TV from 
europe, asia, and the middle east, and show it on live
camera. If that is not a powerful "client" then nothing 
is. What fascinates me is that very soon my wristwatch 
will pack all the same features, then it will be a 
pendant on my necklace, and if you want go totally 
borg it should fit into your tooth in a decade or so.
Paint it blue and make it wireless 802.11 <g>.

> How many of you are using your wearables as thin clients? 

This is the very reason that I chased wearables in the 
first place. The hardware is just an engine. The power
is in the software. The future will be distributed and 
connected. Everything will be a thin client, and they 
will all talk peer-to-peer. My real expertise is in 
distributed computing, I have been chasing it for eons.
It's about to explode on a grand scale.

> This has some merit

I guess it depends on your definition of what a thin client
is. My PCM-5822 is truly physically thin (it's not much
bigger than a palm pilot. It's the ultimate thin client, 
because it's also a server and full x-windows client, and 
can run any peice of software on the planet. I don't see 
much point in building thinner clients when you can squish
a server farm into your fingernail. Moore's law is going
to deliver that to you very soon.

  -- Doug

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