Doug Cutting writes about a web-services / desktop mixture that i like.

In this web-based world, I'd like to keep all my personal data remotely, so that I can access it equally well from a Linux workstation, an Apple laptop, a Palm phone and a Windows-based internet-access terminal. Still, I'd like to leverage my local resources. For example, my laptop and handheld should be able to access my data while offline, and my workstation should be able to search it quickly using a local database.

could gnowsis be the glue? not by his arguments against java, but we are scientists, leave it to the corps to do the dirty c hacking.