The more things change...

Just came across an interesting quotation from Peter Coffee -- a decade ago, when the conversations about the value of PCs on the desktop were ramping up. This was a good reminder at the time; now, the "cost pendulum" seems to have swung the other way?

Peter Coffee, ???Pernicious Patents Imperil Programming???, PC Week, February 14, 2000:
???We didn???t need PCs to deliver end-user applications, a task that was once performed by time-share terminals and that will be performed by Internet appliances. We did need PCs to let people experiment without justifying machine time and without concern for disrupting ???production??? programs.???

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