No, desktop software is not dead yet. You can erect the headstone when you can do everything in the cloud ... at 40,000 feet over the middle of the Pacific, wi

No, desktop software is not dead yet. You can erect the headstone when you can do everything in the cloud ... at 40,000 feet over the middle of the Pacific, without horrendous latency issues. Or in the middle of a backwoods area with one bar of GSM signal showing on your mobile phone and no ADSL to the local phone exchange because it's several miles away. Or when you can guarantee that no foreign government is going to yank a rack of servers hosting a slice of your cloud-hosted app simply because an IP address traced to some other VM in that hosting centre was being used for bittorrent or posting counter-regime propaganda or something. Don't get me wrong: the cloud is useful. The killer apps right now seems to be collaboration and backup -- DropBox in particular. It may also be useful within well-networked corporate enterprises where consistent access to services can be maintained and central curation of IT resources is a desirable business goal (i.e. locking down what staff may or may not do with corporate IP). But until broadband is ubiquitous and reliable and fast, the cloud isn't ready for universal consumer uptake -- and that's going to take a very long time (decades, not single-digit years).