The Econom of Oct 14 ogles the catfight between Wintel and JavaNet to outclaw whineflesh. "Will your next computer be a tin can and a wire?" This week's fall in technology stocks was bad enough. But what if the Internet destroyed the personal-computer industry ...? Sun, Oracle and Netscape are spending tens of millions of dollars on a bet that the Internet can do a lot more than pass around e-mail and transmit data. They think it can also do much of the work of today's computers, holding not just information but software, from word processors and spreadsheets to games and entertainment programs. Most radically, they go on to argue that this could end the reign of the personal computer. Forget Windows 95; some people are starting to wonder if they need Microsoft at all. But those who predict that such machines will kill the PC are ignoring computing history, and glitch-prone real life. The PC beat the mainframe because users wanted the whole computer on their desktop, not in the basement. That makes Java terminals look like a step backwards: by putting program storage far away down a shared network, it makes it vulnerable to delays, congestion, and all the unpredictability of anything out of a user's control. CAT_sho (10 kb)