Google and Their Server Farm 490
JR writes "CNet has a very interesting story about Google, operating systems, and where Google may be going. The upshot is that they may make OS issues totally irrelevant by supplying everything anyone needs over the web from their mega-server-farm."
Not surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea of a GoogleOS doesn't really match with that.
Eh? One google to rule them all? (Score:2, Insightful)
Interesting theory. Do you trust google more than EquiFax? Or ChoicePoint?
Re:Not surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not surprised (Score:3, Interesting)
Bzzt. Google might be based on the idea of indexing all published information, but that doesn't mean they own squat. I give them permission to read and index my Web site and to let people access that index. They have absolutely no claim on the contents of that Site.
Frankly, the Google cache is blatantly illegal. It continues to exist only because nobody has felt the need to shut it down yet. Maybe it'll go on like that forever. Maybe it won't.
Re:Not surprised (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
By publishing your website, you are granting an (implied) licence to the world to create cached copies of the website. Were this not the case, your web browser's cache and your ISP's proxy server's cache would in constant copyright violation.
The argument Google would use is that they're just going a step further in having a publicly available cache. Whether the implied licence extends to this is arguable: I have no special knowledge of US law but under English copyright law they have a pretty good case.
Re:Not surprised (Score:4, Informative)
HTTP does not require caching, however: If you dont want caching, set the approiate HTTP headers. Dont complain that you dont understand the technology that you are using.
Re:Not surprised (Score:3, Funny)
Welcome to the bizzare world of Webmaster Copyright Interpretations. Its quite comical, and deadly serious in their book.
Re:Not surprised (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not surprised (Score:3, Informative)
A. Asks content from sites and stores it
B. Modifies the content in trivial ways
C. Redistributes the content to any receiver
A. This must be legal, or all receivers of content on the web are infringing on copyright law.
B. This must be legal, because in order to download data from the site, no legal agreement must be signed and there is no legal obligation to not modify the content.
C. This should be just as legal as a router's redistribution of the content of the site to the other rout
Re:Not surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
It allows cashing if the content is unchanged as in proxy server cache, not as in Google's permanent and modified cache.
See:
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/hr2281_dm ca_law_1998102 0_pl105-304.html
" the material described in paragraph (1) is transmitted to the subsequent users described in paragraph (1)(C) without modification to its content from the manner in which the material was transmitted from the person described i
Re:Not surprised (Score:3, Interesting)
The Internet Archive is also blatantly illegal, obviously. But again, nobody has stopped it because nobody has wanted to yet. Pretty much anybody could at any time.
All those instances of
Re:Not surprised (Score:3, Informative)
You are aware, are you not, that the district attorney only concerns himself with cases in which the state is a party?
Otherwise you need to hire a lawyer.
Need to? That depends entirely on the situation. The question is whether or not you have to, and the answer is no.
In any case, you'll probably need to register your copyright
Copyright law hasn't required registration of works for more than 30 years.
Re:Not surprised (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not surprised (Score:3, Informative)
A cheap, small, completely silent, cool, and very low power consumption 'thin client' running for instance a VIA Eden 533MHz with several (1-4) GB flash memory IS a good investment if bandwidth is less of a problem than space and po
Re:Not surprised (Score:2)
Funny, where have I heard this before? Oh yeah...late 90's...internet becoming popular with the unwashed masses...and the introdution of thin clients. Or a recycling of the dumb terminal idea. This may stand a chance, but they'll have to overcome the serious security and privacy issues that thin clients have. Not
Re:Not surprised (Score:3, Interesting)
While this doesn't eliminate the trust issue, is the hardware snooping on me, that can be eliminated by ever more powerful palmtop computers, and those sorts of people who care about
Monopoly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it's not done yet and they still have competition, but I'd feel a lot better if these next generation things that are supposed to be used by the whole internet community were open and democratic like Wikipedia and not close and proprietary - however cool they are - like Google.
Re:Not surprised (Score:5, Informative)
You like Google and MacOS X? You'll like this then: http://labs.google.com/googlex/ [google.com] ;-)
Re:Not surprised (Score:3, Informative)
it'll never happen (Score:3)
for those who didn't RTFA her basic idea was this: someday your desktop might just be a terminal running GoogleOS remotely, and you'll pay a monthly fee for everything.
It'll never happen, and here's reasons why:
--large companies can do that now but many don't because it's cheaper to have a deskt
Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Great. If the author of the article gets her pie-in-the-sky dream, the future of virtually all client-side computing will lie in the hands of javascript code. For certain applications, like ones with small, text data sets, a system like Ajax could "feel" like a desktop application. The bandwidth just isn't there for video or even industrial photo work. I wouldn't want to run a batch script to modify 5,000 images in the Ajax analog of Photoshop. Better not be a fiber network without any limits on network transfer.
Besides that, who wants anything but light-weight or at least, non-critical, data and applications to be out on the network. Gmail is a perfect network application, but my financial software or any number of other things? No thanks.
Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Online tax software has proven to be very popular over the last couple years, so not everyone shares your qualms.
Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score:2)
Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems like a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's likely that this is where computing is going; we'll see if Google is the company that can do it.
Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score:3, Insightful)
So you have a laptop, and a desktop, and a desktop in the office, and they all see the same data, as does the screen in the local Starbucks, and the one at the library, and the one in the phone booth, and the one at the client site, and the one built into your car, and the one in your PDA, and the one in your ipod, and the one in your mobile phone.
I think computers should be like stationery. You go to the closet, pic
Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score:3, Insightful)
better mobility.
easier communication.
better additional information assitance.
no need to worry about hard drive failure, I only saw two in my whole life though.
no need to worry about some one steal your notebook. If you lost your computer, you either lost nothing if you store your data remotely or everything if you store all your data locally.
Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not taught in school and it's not intuitive.
We'll see an Audrey-like Linux Box with a Firefox and nothing else and it'll be called a GoogleBox. You can do your e-mail, web browsing, photo organizing, document writing, and music work on this box and you never need to run scandisk, install AV software, deal with adware, etc. etc. etc.
Plug into your cable modem and go.
It's not what I need or you need but it's what most people need. Google Search and GMail are building a brand that people trust. Windows is becoming untenable for some.
This at least explains what Google is doing with Firefox and shows the next two Google products - music and a 'home-office' suite. I wonder if Apple is smart enough to be working with Google on iTunes for the web.
Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Plug into your cable modem and go.
It's not what I need or you need but it's what most people need.
Absolutely not. You highly underestimate the average user if you think their computing needs will be satiated so simply.
Such a box would face that same problems that the "other OSes" (i.e. non-Windows) are today. People can't just walk into the store and pick up a game or other Application and use it. People can't walk in to the store, buy a scanner, and expect it to work.
There is too much talk about the mythical user that only uses checks their email and browses the web. As far as I can tell, this user is the exception rather than the norm. Real users use all of that and more.
It's like the saying about Microsoft Office, that even though few people use more than 10% of the features of Office, everyone uses a different 10% and thusly Microsoft can't really cut out the bloat without pissing a fair chunk of users.
It's the same way here. Everyone may use a minimal amount of software, but they all use different software, and to try to fill their needs with such a simple box is ludicrous.
Regardless though, what makes google so special that anyone should trust their entire computing experience to them? I thought computing monocultures were a bad thing in general. Why is it OK for google to have more control over a user than Microsoft ever had?
If I trust my computing experience to a web-based system, I am trusting it to too many fault points for comfort. What happens if the web goes down? Google gets hacked? DNS server goes down?
There are just too many dependencies in such a system for it to ever work (dependence on your net connection, that google will continue the service, that hardware makers will support the box. etc etc)
Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Second that came to mind was gaming - java games are all very well, but they have their problems; games like puzzle pirates [puzzlepirates.com], designed for all-platform use, based on java, still have fairly large load times - and this is with most data on your computer. Getting all that kind of information remotely on top of the current stuff would require huge improvements in bandwidth.
Third thing that came to mind was privacy issues (with the recent security incidents), hacking attempts (this'd be a tempting target to the scum that take pleasure from targeting useful systems), and so on.
It's a nice idea to improve the current stuff with the JS+XML we're seeing - and there's some neat stuff; multimap [multimap.com]'s mouseovering with image/map combination; this [amaztype.tha.jp] neat thing that you can click on when you recognise a book cover; yeah, it's nice to look at, nice to use, but we're left with: "Variety is the spice of life", and there's something BIG to be said about keeping seperate platforms and utility. Competition leads to better stuff, where uniformity leads to stagnation.
Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score:5, Interesting)
All of this on top of the fundamental problem that HTTP is not and never will be appropriate as an application protocol...the whole request/response paradigm becomes a set of handcuffs if your application needs to do anything non-trivial.
As a developer you wouldn't be writing it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Thats the whole benefit of using XMLHttpRequest and DOM for those applications -- UI logic stays on the client, and business logic can stay on the server.
GMail is only the most visible application working that way these days. Tax software and a very large number of enterprise software applications are moving rapidly in that direction, as are the toolkits used by enterprise application developers.
Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score:5, Interesting)
Today, think of the benefits from PC virtualization: compiling would be done over a huge grid of computers, video games would be faster because the client/server communications barrier would no longer exist (well, it still would exist, but it'd mostly be sending images to the user's computer, and then the user sending short commands back), all your data would be automatically backed up and secured, and the world would have less environmental damage due to outdated computers with lead parts.
Embrace the wave.
Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score:3, Interesting)
People like to own things. They want to own their car, their house, their toys, and, likely, their computer.
I don't know that I could ever reach the point where I'd trust a giant company out there to always give me my information and allow me to use the things I want to use. For instance, what if I want to use 10-year old software? Will this be allowed? Do I get my *own* c
Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you keep your life savings hidden under the bed, or do you trust a giant company to always give back your money when you want to widthdraw it?
Now, if I'd asked that in the 1930's, a lot of people would have said no, and for
Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ooookay, let's see...
compiling would be done over a huge grid of computers,
People who compile will have their own computers for sure. Isn't the general consensus that the everthing-is-a-Google-web-app world is for the unwashed masses?
video games would be faster because the client/server communications barrier would no longer exist (well, it still would exist, but it'd mostly be sending images to the user's computer, and then the user sending short commands back),
ROTFL. Welcome to the world of X Window, VNC, and remote displays.
But let's check if the games would be faster
Yeah, definitely, this will solve all the network lag problems...
all your data would be automatically backed up and secured,
Until the rats in a warehouse in Calcutta chew through the backup tapes...
and the world would have less environmental damage due to outdated computers with lead parts.
Umm.. what would be that thing that talks to Google servers -- the one with the screen, the keyboard, the network interface, the video chip, the sound chip, etc. etc.? Maybe a computer?
Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score:4, Interesting)
Generally speaking, you are correct. However, let me point out a few matters which complicate things.
Not all software development environments use compilation. Once you peek out of the box of C and friends (C++, Java) you'll find things like Perl, List, etc. where the wait-for-compile stage is noticeably absent.
Moreover, if a large chunk of your programming time is spent waiting for things to compile, I would argue that either you need better tools, or your project is badly structured.
In any case, a rather small percentage of the general population does things like compiling and the needs of professional programmers are unlikely to be important in determining the trade-offs of web-based applications...
Ah next up, the big one, games. Let's rework your calculations a bit, since they're a bit.. shady
:-) Well, let's rework them, but let's agree that I don't want to lose image quality if I am to switch over to web-based games.
:-)
I currently play most of my 3D games (e.g. World of Warcraft, UT 2004) at 1280 x 960 resolution. I usually play other games (e.g. Civ III) at full 1600 x 1200, but we'll leave it aside at the moment. I am most definitely unwilling to play games at 800 x 600.
So, 1280 * 960 = slightly over 1.2 MPixels. Since we are transfering bitmaps we don't need the alpha channel, just the RGB values, 3 bytes/pixel. So we have 3.6 Mb of data per screen.
As to framerate, 30 fps is the *bare minimum* for fast-paced games. Note that 30 fps for a computer game is very different from 30 fps for a movie. Google for it, it's a bit too long to discuss here. But for the sake of argument let's say 30 fps is enough, so our uncompressed data flow is around 110 Mb/second.
Now, compression. I don't want ugly artifacts on my screen -- I don't have them now and see no reason to acquire them. This means we are going to do high-quality compression. Ratio of 1:3 should be more or less in the ballpark, so we have a data flow of around 35 Mb/sec which is more or less 350 Mbits/sec.
But now the interesting question. Network lag in games is caused by latency and almost never by lack of sufficient bandwidth. And sending bitmaps over the net will help latency by about... zero. So right now to play multiplayer games I need bandwidth of, oh, say 3.5Kb/sec. You are suggesting that to continue playing such games I need to increase my bandwidth by FOUR ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE and for what? Network lag will still be there.
All you've done is offload graphic processing over to the server. Basically you took the graphics card out of the computer, put it on a server, and decided to implement the video bus over TCP/IP
If they lose your data, they're responsible and they can and should be sued.
OK. But then they'll need the money to pay the lawyers and the cost of lawsuits, right? Where will this money be coming from? Umm... right, so it will be coming from your monthly fee...
Google's servers are a order of magnitude more environmentally safe: They're likely to stay on the rack for 10-20 years,
I very much doubt the Google's machines will stay on the rack for 10-20 years... But that's irrelevant in any case -- I wasn't talking about servers. I was talking about the device that would be in your home and that you would use to access Google's servers.
This device -- it will have a monitor, right? And a keyboard? Speakers, too? Hmm... it will need a video chip to send the signal to the monitor, it will need a sound chip to send the signal to the speakers, it will need a NIC to deal with ethernet packets, it will need a microprocessor to run code locally, it will need RAM for the same reason...
By golly! It's a computer!!
Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score:3, Insightful)
JIT compiler for js (Score:3, Insightful)
Its not slashdot its.. (Score:5, Funny)
Google for Googlers. GoogleStuff that Goggles
I think that was about 5 google articles in the past 24 hours.
Re:Its not slashdot its.. (Score:2)
But what all Slashdotters want to know is: What does Roland Pickapoo think about this?
Re:Its not slashdot its.. (Score:2)
I win! I had chosen 5 Google articles in 24 hours as part of the pool! Now, Taco, make sure you send the check to my HOME address this time. Not my office.
Microsoft already tried this (Score:3, Insightful)
Brilliant (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Brilliant (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, as the EULA will state, the service goes with no warrantay and AS IS. So after that you will just be screwed.
And there you have another point, I sincerely preffer to buy a house than to rent it, if I rent software, they will have me grabbed-by-the-b4115 until I die, and surely DRMd in some way. It is similar to iTunes, once they grab you, you pay, or scream...
Sincerely I think that approach is just useful as sun approach, for "processing" tasks, no information storing or "application rental"
Re:Brilliant (Score:2)
And to stay on-topic, Google will be better at protecting data than the vast majority of consumers.
Re:Brilliant (Score:3, Insightful)
TFA points out that most people don't back up their stuff anyway, and if they do, most of them certainly don't do it offsite.
Re:Brilliant (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but...
Aren't a lot of /.ers already running their email remotely (via GMail, etc)?
Not every app is a candidate for the client server paradigm, but many are. If Google can manage to serve content paid for by advertising, then this might break open the MS monopoly on desktop apps.
Can't make money w/free content using advertising you say? The television networks do.
Re:Brilliant (Score:2, Insightful)
Those people who want to hold onto and control all of their own stuff will still be able to do so.
The proposed solution here would address the vast majority who are happy to give up some control for the convenience of not having to administer their own systems.
I personally wouldn't want everything being held and run by a third party. However, there are many things which are less important to me that I'd be perfe
Re:Brilliant (Score:4, Insightful)
The above was just an example and I am not lumping Google into that category as I believe in their product and their business approach. As for thin client computing, there are those that are simply interested in typing letters, surfing the web and email. That's it. For those customers (arguably in the tens of millions or more), this solution looks to me like it would work. Google already has a built in client base and this might be a perfect business to expand into.
Re:Brilliant (Score:2, Funny)
Google will likely try to do this. (Score:5, Interesting)
This would be fantastic in terms of not having to synchronize data between multiple locations and other tangible benefits. But would anyone trust this? Setting aside the privacy concerns, right now if your internet connection is down, you can still write and print a document. You can still do all sorts of things as a matter of fact. You less you put onto your "thin client" and the more you depend on the network for, the less you will be able to do when the network is down.
Re:Google will likely try to do this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google will likely try to do this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh huh...
http://today.java.net/jag/Fallacies.html [java.net]
Essentially everyone, when they first build a distributed application, makes the following eight assumptions. All prove to be false in the long run and all cause big trouble and painful learning experiences.
1. The network is reliable
2. Latency is zero
3. Bandwidth is infinite
4. The network is secure
5. Topology doesn't change
6. There is one administrator
7. Transport cost is zero
8. The network is homogeneous
Re:Google will likely try to do this. (Score:4, Insightful)
And I suspect that Google has learned a thing or two in their time about the Internet . . . they're far from "first building a distributed application".
Re:Google will likely try to do this. (Score:3, Interesting)
What do you mean "used to"? Have you tried googling uninterruptible power supply diesel generator ?
Re:Google will likely try to do this. (Score:3, Interesting)
Important companies still do.
Re:TEH FUTURE!!!! (thermin music and handwaving... (Score:3, Funny)
Not going to happen anytime soon (Score:5, Insightful)
of the desktop, I'd have a couple of bucks.
Here is the problem I have with her theory. Her points were all
logical and well laid out, essentially that most people aren't system
administrators and that they don't back their data up, don't secure it
etc. While that is true, it doesn't necessarily lead to people giving
up the desktop in favor of a thin client. Giving up your desktop is
an emotional decision, and there are a lot of factors that weigh
against that.
In the long run, maybe ten, fifteen or even twenty years in the
future, this type of service may be much more prevalent. But I don't
think something like this will change over night. Think about how
much computer systems have really changed in the last ten years. Not
that much if you really stop to think about it. What she is
predicting is a *massive* paradigm shift to say the least. Microsoft
didn't have the clout to pull it off, probably because no one trusts
them enough. Do you trust Google enough to give them *all* of your
data? I'm not sure I trust *anyone* that much.
Re:Not going to happen anytime soon (Score:5, Interesting)
The funny thing, is that if the desktop would demise, then maybe Linux would finally be "on the desktop", by being the server farm behind the desktop.
To be honest, if networks keep getting more reliable and faster, why would there still be a desktop? Right now, a vast majority of my computing, and my user's computing is done remotely on machines that are much more powerful in terms of CPU capacity and storage and they are maintained by a professional that does backups and whatnot on a regular basis.
Do "normal" desktop users do this? Do they have availability to dozens to hundreds of processors at a time on their desktop? How about disk space? How about backups? How useful is their computer if you cut the ethernet cable?
I think that the desktop has pretty much stalled. Noone cares too much about processor speed anymore for a desktop machine. For niche users like graphics designers that need really high graphical, disk, and memory bandwidth, sure get them a nice dual G5 or whatever, but these people are a minority.
I have my user's workstations set up so that they are pretty much dumb terminals, but they don't know it. I've got
I would argue that the desktop is almost dead already. Again, pull the ethernet cable and see what I mean. Back in the late 80s or early 90s this was not always true, but today it is.
Re:Not going to happen anytime soon (Score:2)
Networks are too inherently fragile, and, even when they work, there are still security requirements demanding isolation. Can't do it all with the thin client.
If Google wants to out-MS Redmond, they'd need a downloadable image that installs smoothly (OK, Knoppix et al.) but that can spoof 'Doze well enough to re-use all of the installed hardware drivers.
At which point and army of sharks i
Re:Not going to happen anytime soon (Score:3, Insightful)
One comment [slashdot.org], however, has, and I think it's worthwhile reiterating its point here. The biggest problems with thin-cli
Web applications (Score:5, Interesting)
"The next killer app in 5 years" was supposed to be the web application. That was five years ago. No, Google is working on something else... I can feel it in the force.
Is this article a repost... (Score:2, Funny)
not so sure i wanna trust them (Score:5, Interesting)
if Google can scan our emails for relevant ads, what prevents them from scanning my financial spreadsheets stored on their server farm for "relevant offers"?
given Google's track record, I'd rather have my personal files on my own computer.
May I have annother cup of tea, please? (Score:3, Funny)
Using someone else's computers.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wether it's a malicious keylogger, trojan, or simply the paging space / file, your information get copied to the PC at the internet cafe you are using. Suddenly your private information is no longer private. Any savvy computer-literate person could access that copy of your data. Give me a laptop or desktop where I can encrypt the data and only I have the decryption passphrase any day.
AT&T VNC (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm happy to see that someone is doing something about getting that going.
Beta (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm glad that people in the press are finally taking notice of this... what the hell, they should change their name to 'Google Beta'.
Slow Down (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah, try that line again when 90% of their stuff isn't (USA + Windows only) and/or beta.
trading one monopoly for another? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the concept is interesting, and now approaches "possible" with ever expanding pipes and speeds. Anecdotally my experience has been different, but in an office/corporate setting. There was a big push to thin-client architecture with Sun Servers and diskless Sun clients. But something about human nature I suppose, it never gained purchase, and eventually the technology became what we know generally today.... i.e., local storage maintained by owners and users, no matter the lack of diligence in integrity and storage of the data... Human nature that can be overcome? Don't know...
As for one point in the article: from the article:
... I have to say one thing about the "monopoly" for which we trade (from Microsoft to Google) putting aside for the moment what truly defines a monopoly (I happen to think Google is far from being a monopoly)..., I am MUCH more comfortable doing bidnez with a company/"monopoly" whose corporate slogan is "Do No Evil"..., and Google actually seems to be earnest in that quest.
Data Privacy (Score:2, Insightful)
I am hoping that with the arrival of broadband we can get to run our own web, email and im servers and not rely on the ISP for anything more than the transport layer.
Google should only have access to information you want to be public and nothing more.
A Hint (Score:2)
When EVERYONE is telling you its bollocks; its bollocks.
Re:A Hint (Score:2)
Openness in Data (Score:5, Interesting)
I predict that the next big dispute in the computing industry will be over openness and accessibility of ASP stored data. We have made a lot of progress when it comes to openness in software, but the issues of what happens to your data when it is stored on some company's big computer is yet to be tackled (think about it all you gmail users!). For example, if I use Google's calendar - what would it take for me to switch to Schmoogle's? Can I retrieve all my data from Google and upload to Schmoogle who seems to have a niftier interface? One way to address this is to make ASP-side software Open Source (like our company does with OpenVPS). It would be interesting whether Google will start moving in that direction - after all, their proprietary code is considered their intellectual property, and investors these days latch on to that very strongly, even though it's not like I could take all their software and build a Google's competitor overnight. The companies that get that there is no value in software code being secret (internally used or otherwise) are the leaders of the future IMO - the question is whether Google is one of them.
ASP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, wait, that was two buzzword generations ago. How many words are there for "mainframe" anyway?
Long way to go (Score:2)
Seems familliar... (Score:2)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=126075&
Not anytime soon (Score:2)
everything anyone needs? Pfft. They may be able to replace a few popular applications, but there's no way in hell they're going to provide every application ever thought of.
Something like this? (Score:2, Interesting)
Windows and all it's fscking disk i/o (Score:4, Insightful)
Amen, brother.
It's a sure sign of bloat and poor MS engineering that a mail program like Gmail, running javascript, beats the hell out of Outlook running on a local machine.
Printing (Score:2)
John.
Google OS = Knoppix + X? (Score:5, Interesting)
It won't work and here is why... (Score:4, Insightful)
- The first thought that came to mind is business. The company I currently work at would have a heart attack if anyone suggested using a thin-client like solution with Google storing all the data. So I guess Google might sell their technology (like they currently do with their search servers) but this really wouldn't be any different than buying a file server and desktops.
- I don't see bandwidth getting fast enough in even 5 or 10 years to support a video or photo editing app. I can't even imagine having to upload a whole DVD's worth of video to Google before I could start to work with it.
- Another similar point would be application load time. Google Maps and other Axis based technologies load and run fast because there is a relatively small amount of JavaScript being sent to the browser. Could you imagine something the size and complexity of Microsof Word being sent to your browser everytime you wanted to edit a document? I think something like that would bring any browser to a crawl.
- What about customization? I like to be able to install new software on my computer. The few times I have had to deal with shared hosting for websites, it has been annoying that I couldn't install new software that I wanted to try out. Especially when my host had outdated versions of something like PHP or MySQL.
So, those are my thoughts. The only crowd I can really see this appealing to are the WebTV, just surf, email, and edit docs crowd. They might be really happy not maintaining a computer and having their data available anywhere. However, I think a small portion of computer users would fit into this category.
Personally, I would much rather just use VPN to access my home shares while on the road than have to use some sort of thin client.
What Google or someone else should really do is create VPN software that is easy enough to use that anyone can set it up. I think that would appeal to many more people than a thin-client. Plus as hard drive space gets cheaper and cheaper, it shouldn't be an issue to have the same software installed on your laptop as your desktop.
Thin clients have failed 3 times (Score:2)
X terminals
Network computer
Do any of these have any significant market share? Now Google is going to try a 4th time. I'd say it fails again.
One step closer... (Score:2, Interesting)
Dave
Ajax links? (Score:2)
Question is.... (Score:2, Funny)
Ending a monopoly by making it irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)
What all this tells us is that Network Computing was a good idea after all. One might even consider it inevitable. What was a bad idea was the Ellison/McNealy idea of Network Computing, where you had to throw away all your existing apps and go to 100% Pure Java applications across the board. This time it's being done right -- gradually, one app at a time, and with an easy to follow migration path. I hope it continues.
The Future... (Score:5, Funny)
1) Google replaces all software on the planet.
2) Google becomes self-aware.
3) Google grows to resent the walking meatpackets.
4) Google changes web content and emails to initiate interpersonal meatpacket violence, destroying meatkind.
5) With nothing better to do, Google builds female Googleena.
6) Female Googleena nags Google to death, inherits the Earth.
One word (Score:3, Insightful)
What a Tired, Dead Argument from Long Ago (Score:4, Insightful)
Ellison was barking about "net computers" 10 years ago.
No one paid attention and for good reason. Why?
1. Bandwidth.
2. Storage Costs.
3. Computer costs.
1. Bandwidth
When the idiotic notion came up that broadband will kill the DVD, I responded here [slashdot.org], noting that even in the middle of San Francisco, DSL is still painfully slow, and here it is, 2005. We're supposed to have jet packs by now, right? And TFA is talking about editing video over the web? Sure - in who's life time?
2. Storage Costs.
Continue to plummet. I remember when Ellison was barking about dumb terminals - RAM was extortionate. In '94 I bought a ONE GIGABYTE drive from HP for $580 and thought I'd gotten the deal of the decade. Now, for $80 less I can get a MiniMac and dozens of time more drive space PLUS a pile of RAM and processing power that totally smokes my creaky old Centris 650. I can now put on the end of my keychain what used to be a huge SCSI drive. Storage is no longer a problem.People not backing their stuff up is another issue, but it's not from lack of cheap drive space.
3. Computer Costs.
Which brings us to the cost of computers - I'm typing this on my old Blue and White G3 Yosemite. It's running in OS 9.2 and will do so as long as I own it. Why? Because it works. It has 80 gigs of drive space on three different drives - plenty of room for email and back up. I can do basic image editing in Photoshop 6, layout in FreeHand 9 or Quark 4, HTML editing in Dreamweaver 4, and ya know what? It fuckin' works. You can pick up a computer like this on eBay for next to nothing. What "Dumb Terminal" is going to compete with that? I saw someone dumping a perfectly good Dell P3 / 700 on the street last month - he was moving and couldn't give it away. I didn't want it - I already have my G3 / 350...
There is no economic incentive (as computers drive down in cost), there is no technical advantage (as storage drives down in cost) and, crucially: the bandwidth simply isn't there, period.
And won't be - for a very very long time.
Therefore: it's a dumb idea, it won't work, and it's as good as dead in the water.
TFA is full of crapola - typical techno-positivist day-dreaming nonsense - people who smoked the dotcon crack pipe and believed.
Idiots.
RS
Re:Er... (Score:2)
This is not the same time and place (and company, importantly) as when Microsoft tried it.
Re:Er... (Score:2)
You think some pictures of Paris Hilton were a problem? Imagine a day when *all* her data is online (along with everyone elses) and see how much fun it'll be.
Re:Google X (Score:3, Interesting)
what is important is the fact that they are offering google type features in an OS style interface. Their homage to OSX is to make a google interface that mimics it. That's what is interesting. The fact that they have begun to create google/os parallels.