I have a great idea for an enormous increase in computer speed! VM's are fantastic, right? Like JVM, .NET, the runtimes of various interpreted languages... Sure, why not? They're wonderful things. Hell, how did we ever manage to scrape by without them? Fuck native code! That shit sucked! And worse yet, it's the old way! I ain't no dinosaur! But we always want more speed, right? Well, VMs are created in software...So...What's faster than doing something in software? Much, much, much faster? Doing it in hardware! Imagine! A super, super fast VM! Super-charged with actual hardware! Sweet! Oh my god...and what if...just what if...these languages could all get together, and use a common VM! Holy Hell on a Shit Scraping Stick! I want it! We have to make a CPU that operates on a set of standardized bytecodes!!!
Oh that's right, we have one. It's called the x86...
Fuck!
Ok, the hell with speed. Let's talk Cloud. You know, that thing we used to call the Internet? (God, "Internet" is soooo 90's!) Yes, we'll go to the cloud and we'll give up writing efficient software. We can live with text-entry forms that are sluggish compared to a 386's word processor even though they're running on what's comparatively a super-computer. Shoot speed in the head, it's dead. RIP speed. And efficiency. And the environmental impact of the extra power used by lots and lots of inefficient software. After all, I do my part: When anyone asks, I tell them I'm against global warming! Yes! So screw efficiency. It's sad, but it's ok! It's all so we can write our software in nicer, easier, saner, more expressive, more reliable, more productive languages! Yes! Of course! The worthwhile benefit for our sacrifice is that we get to use fantastic, expressive, rock-solid languages like...JavaScript?..........Motherfuck!
Security! Security! Yes! That's the benefit all this roundabout crap is getting us! Security!
These web apps and such are all sandboxed. Software can't do anything bad in a sandbox! Like Adobe's Flash Player! After all, the Flash Player is known for never having any exploi...Wait, forget I said that...Like I was saying, software can't do anything bad in a sandbox. It can't delete your system files. It can't steal your data. It can't log your keystrokes...wait...umm...It can't delete your system files or steal your data! Of course, that means it also can't let you edit or even view any of the files you have on your computer...Or let you change your system settings...Or...Hmmm...
You know what? Those sound like great ideas! I want to make web apps that let people view and edit their files and adjust their computer's settings so that their system settings follow them around to any computer they use! Yea! Ok, we'll we need to add some new features to these sandboxes...open local files, save local files, access system settings...Oh! And this is in a web app, so it's all totally cross-platform by default! That saves me time and effort! Wow, yea, I'm loving these results, this is fantastic! Huh...wait a minute...I could have sworn that important file I couldn't afford to loose was right here but now I don't see it. Wha...Weird, how'd those people get hold of that, because I don't remember uploading tha...Why are my window borders covered in animal porn?!?! Well, that's what I get for using "M$" Windows. No matter, I'll head to my nice safe OSX. Huh? Same thing?! Et tu, Linux?
Ok, well, obviously the problem here is because I was trying to use a local system instead of the fundamentally superior Cloud. I'll just use an Internet-based ser...erm, I mean a Cloud-based service to store my data. Obviously I'll want to use a respectable big name company. That way I can have their professionals handle security for me! Yup, as long as I stick to a reputable company, they can always be trusted to keep my data secure! After all, it's not like Google or Facebook would ever have security breaches or privacy cock-ups or...err...umm...whoops! No, see, what I mean is, it's not as if GMail would be susceptible to the same super-well-known exploit like session hijacking for over a year or so...uhh...shit. Well, at the very least, if I switch to their browser they'd never install any other always-resident software on my computer without telling me or giving me an option to disable it or...
Goddammit, I give up.
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