Mark Baker takes Adam Bosworth to task for not understanding the web. Or more properly, for not thinking RESTian thoughts. I've done a little bit with REST, and quite a bit more with SOAP/WSDL, and at a certain level of abstraction it doesn't matter whether the glue between the client and the web is REST or web services. Of course, at another level it's vitally important, but that's what the REST and web services disputes are all about. The web services folks are advancing their vision (soon, they'll need an acronym demystifier), and the REST folks are claiming that we already have all that we need.

Look at what Mark spent a lot of effort on:

I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out how to integrate CORBA, OpenDoc, and the Web, in an attempt to yield what Adam's asking for.

Cross off CORBA and replace it with either REST or web services. The Web is already there. The missing piece is OpenDoc or something like it. Browsers are all well and good, but we need to integrate the data with what's on the local machine (at least until we've turned PC's back into 3270's speaking HTTP). Browsers don't do that very well. The big piece that we need to make progress on is something like what OpenDoc was. Java doesn't have something. Microsoft stopped working on theirs after OpenDoc disappeared into Area 51 along with CommonPoint and Dylan. The only memorable things about Longhorn are a UI that needs DirectX 10, and a database layer that sits on top of NTFS. The Gnome guys were working on Bonobo, but the last time I was with Miguel he was apologizing to someone about Bonobo, so that's not encouraging.