I fail to see how Netscape is any worse that the original Mosaic when
it came out - remember all the people saying how Mosaic alone with all its
inlined GIFs was chewing up network and server bandwidth? Well its been
a few years now and people have gotten used to the relatively large
amount of bandwidth/resources that Mosaic causes. Netscape now ups the
bar even more - so what? If you want to see a real bandwith hog,
check out the Internet multicast channels - live video and audio over
the Internet certainly chews up a lot more bandwidth and processing
power than anything Netscape can do.
Just because a company releases an Internet application that uses a lot
of resources does not, in my mind, make them irresponsible. I think
where you are coming from, Rob, is that the Internet is a shared resource
and we should all respect this resource and tred on it lightly.
I don't agree. We all pay for this resource to some Internet service
provider who has the responsibility to provide adequate network
bandwidth for whatever we want to do with the net. Exactly like
paying for telephone service - while we don't think of the voice
telephone network as a shared resource, it is (bottlenecks being
switching capacity and long distance trunk line capacity). You don't
hear anyone complaining when IBM sets up a huge call response center
with 500 telephone lines. You don't hear about it because IBM pays for
it and the telcos involved make sure that their network can deliver
capacity to both IBM and all the one line households in the same area.
If you're worried about how Netscape will impact web space providers,
well ths choice is simple - either keep up with the technology (ie.
get a Unix machine with better i/o performance), or don't operate
a web server. Nobody is forcing you to operate a web server.
-- Phil Trubey | NetPartners | Providing Internet products and services. E-mail: phil@netpart.com | Home Page: http://www.netpart.com/ Phone: 714-759-1641 |