A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn’t even know existed can render your own computer unusable.
– Leslie Lamport, as quoted in CACM, June 1992
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@estherschindler Reminds me of that terrible marketing phrase from Sun Computer. “The network is the computer.”
A few years later and…
“The network is the network, and the computer is the computer. Sorry for any confusion.”
Suns were Unix and worked fine on the internet once they got a gateway.
@sfleetucker @estherschindler wasn't just marketing. Scott McNealy truly believed it. Java was going to deliver it.
The weird thing is it started in the 80s before the Internet took off. John Gage?