Java, Blacbird and The Future of the Web ...

[Miriam Bobkoff]

On Mon, 20 Nov 1995, Thomas Dowling wrote:

> Are you really many years away from 486/33s with more than 4MB of 
> RAM?  If so you have my sympathies, but I think your energy would be 
> better spent explaining the situation to your budgeting and purchasing 
> people.

Please don't underestimate how far away from those specs many of 
the lurkers on this list may be. 

The City of Santa Fe's MIS department has proudly arranged for us to have 
29 brand new, count 'em, 29, 4MB machines for our soon-to-arrive (and no, 
up to now we haven't had one) online public access catalog. So naturally 
when we go to deliver Net access to the critters, they are not gonna run 
Netscape or any graphical browser very efficiently. The next thing, 
Java or whatever? No way. Not to mention that the remainder of the 
stations on our ethernet will be even older feebler clunkers which we 
are just grateful they will function as dumb OPAC stations. 

> explaining the situation to your budgeting and purchasing people.

Nah. Relations with MIS for the moment are excellent, after years of 
stress and disrespect on both sides. Making ungrateful noises is not being 
allowed by our director.

And she's probably right. We're among the lucky ones. No budget cuts, 
special City funding (from a one-time "Quality of Life" bundle of money) to 
buy the aforesaid OPAC system, a generous and indefatigable Friends 
group, etc... 

Miriam Bobkoff
Santa Fe Public Library
    Miriam's Home Page  http://www.rt66.com/~mbobkoff/
    The Library's (temporary address!) http://www.rt66.com/~mbobkoff/sfpl/