Getting Fat off PeopleSoft
Posted On: 12/15/2006
I must be getting old. I'm starting to get nostalgic for the way things
used to be. I start sentences with, "When I was a lad". Yes, I use the
word "lad". Remember the good old days when we had client-server computing?
What ever happened to that?
In the good old days, when the PeopleSoft Users' Conference was medium-sized
(think Vancouver, not New Orleans), Dave Duffield told two stories in his
keynote address which stuck with me. The first went like this: "The other
day, I got one of those birthday cards which plays ‘Happy Birthday' when
you open it. I played it a couple of times, got bored, and threw the card
away. When I did that, I threw out more computing power than existed in
the entire world in 1967". Hmmm. Makes you think. The second story:
"I was talking to a customer who has an automated warehouse. He tells
me that in the future, the warehouse will have only two employees – a man
and a dog. The man is there to feed the dog. The dog is there to make
sure the man doesn't touch anything." Hmmm. Makes you laugh and think.
Then Dave went on to tell us why "fat client" was the wave of the future.
That was eight years ago.
I'm nostalgic for the days we could actually do things on our desktop
computers. At my current client, they are now removing everyone's Local
Admin rights, as well as all "unauthorized" software. Unfortunately, their
standard image doesn't include a text editor, so I will be reduced to using
vi. OK – I love vi, but that's not the point. I'm beginning to feel like
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