Rupert Goodwins' Diary
Desperate to make amends for declaring a jihad on the technology community, Queen Elizabeth has dubbed http://tim.berners.lee a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Thrilled by this ultimate vindication of his vision, Berners-Lee has immediately set up some new top-level domains, from .cbe to .gcmg, to reflect the range of gongs on offer, and restructured the hierarchy of the Net to more closely reflect that of the British class system, After all, anything that's managed to survive the best part of a thousand years is bound to have the edge on ideas cobbled up by colonials in some dusty Formica-coated lab.
So forget client-server, and most definitely forget peer-to-peer. We're talking peer-to-knight, knight-to-squire and all-to-peasant from now on. The seven layer network model is to be replaced by Upper, Upper-Middle, Middle, Lower-Middle and Lower class layers, with the Lower Class level doing the work, the Upper Class level displaying the results and the Middle Class levels worrying an awful lot about whether they're getting the protocols right. Firewalls are to be made out of sturdy stone, ring'd round with moats, with security management consoles replaced by Major Generals, and kernels with colonels. Forget Active Directory: its place will be taken by Burke's Peerage.
File transfers are to be initiated by messengers carrying unfeasibly long trumpets, with the source and destination addresses read out in sonorous 15th century English from little rolls of parchment tied around with Cat 5 cable. Et, as they say, cetera.
Gentlemen. I give you -- The Queen!