"We now have technologies that effectively mix web and desktop technologies, something I like to call 'webtop clients', manifest in Adobe Flash Player, Java Applets, and Microsoft Silverlight."

1. Flash is used for: video, music, ads (usually also only to enable video), and sites for the sort of web design shops you don't want to hire. Also, games, a special case. When was the last time you saw Flash used to recreate a desktop-GUI-style app? That OpenLaszlo (sp?) sure is taking the world by storm, eh?

2. Nobody uses Java applets.

3. Nobody uses Silverlight.

Statelessness is the core strength of the web, and the core strength of web applications. The limitations the web naturally imposes make for better applications and a better user experience than the GUI paradigm. (Every time I hear about some great new continuation-based web framework, there's always an example showing how easy it is to create the equivalent of a modal dialogue, and I always want to hit the writer over the head with a copy of a decent book on interface design. Modes are bad! Statelessness is good! The resource-centric model is good! Users like these things for the same reason you like REST better than SOAP and modular code rather than otherwise — people don't do modes!

(Sorry for the rant, these GUI partisans get me riled up.)