Publishers are struggling to decide what to put on the Web and what to put on paper. The failure of this hardcopy approach stems from the rapid changes in the technologies and players in the net-centric world and from the book's disorganization, which would have benefited immeasurably from hyperlinks, if not a thorough rewrite. Many companies and technologies described in the book have metamorphosed beyond recognition. But even here, it's hardly worth struggling through the turgid prose.
Some engineers differentiate between the two extremes by the amount of response time necessary.
Others differentiate by the amount of deterministic precision. It gives technical journalism a bad name. If the Web Tone provides higher bandwidth, I'm all for it, but that's not what Cole discusses in this section. Instead, he covers security and reliability. The road to this future might be a little clearer, however, if a better publication pointed the way.