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From: Anti Vigilante on 3 Nov 2009 11:24
On Tue, 2009-11-03 at 11:41 +0000, dan(a)telent.net wrote:
> Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro(a)pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com>
> writes:
>
> > On 2009-11-01 10:23:48 -0500, dan(a)telent.net said:
> >
> >> And while you can have all the storage you like (subject to
> >> bandwidth, latency, traffic limits, caps, shaping, route flapping, ...)
> >> you can't rely on client-side compute cycles being cheap.
> >
> > But you can often rely on client side compute cycles being faster and
> > cheaper than doing the computation on the server and having to send
> > the (rather large) result over a slow, unreliable, expensive
> > connection (for example, 3G or shared 802.11x).
>
> Certainly, if you're talking about image processing or somesuch. SVG
> and Flash are good examples. But in general, you still can't trust the
> answer - would you install a shopping basket system where the "total
> cost plus shipping" field was calculated client-side?
>
>
> -dan

Sanitize the variables (decontextualize or even reformat) and there's no
risk. Disguise the addition as an exponent operation and then take the
log on the server side. But I wouldn't hijack a user's computer the way
AOL wanted to.

But this isn't what I had in mind. My idea was to have computer owners
provide their resources as peers and you could then farm thousands of
operations out to people who could actually use the cash.

From: Raffael Cavallaro on 3 Nov 2009 12:25
On 2009-11-03 06:41:28 -0500, dan(a)telent.net said:

> Certainly, if you're talking about image processing or somesuch.

This is the sort of thing I was thinking of.

> SVG
> and Flash are good examples. But in general, you still can't trust the
> answer - would you install a shopping basket system where the "total
> cost plus shipping" field was calculated client-side?

My point is not that a network capable OS is totally useless, but
rather that the web OS enthusiasts' extreme position that the cloud
will become the OS is misguided. I think that the future of OSes looks
more like iTunes than a web browser - that is, network capable, but
with much of the heavy lifting happening client side and still quite
usable without a network connection. This is because network access is
often unreliable, and slow, and people who work with computers will
want to continue to do so even in poor network conditions.

The explosive growth of the public internet has led to a caricaturish
notion of computer use which is more akin to a teenage girl's cellphone
use (which consists almost entirely of saying "I'm still here - are you
still there?" in various forms over the network) than that of a working
professional who still needs to get some work done even when the
network is slow, or down entirely. No cloud OS will ever become
dominant until the advent of ubiquitous, fast, reliable, network
access, and I'm not holding my breath for that.


--
Raffael Cavallaro

From: Tamas K Papp on 3 Nov 2009 12:41
On Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:25:05 -0500, Raffael Cavallaro wrote:

> the OS is misguided. I think that the future of OSes looks more like
> iTunes than a web browser - that is, network capable, but with much of
> the heavy lifting happening client side and still quite usable without a
> network connection. This is because network access is often unreliable,
> and slow, and people who work with computers will want to continue to do
> so even in poor network conditions.

Precisely. The other day I was sitting on the train programming, and
being connected using 3G. The train went into a tunnel, network
connection vanished. What would a "cloud Emacs" do in these
circumstances? Suggest a coffee break? (the espresso they serve on that
train is abominable).

> is slow, or down entirely. No cloud OS will ever become dominant until
> the advent of ubiquitous, fast, reliable, network access, and I'm not
> holding my breath for that.

Even if we had perfect network access, I would still prefer to have
full control over my data and thus keep it on my machine. I would
rather manage my computer than have [cloud provider] vaguely apologize
that 10^8 other users might have "accidentally" accessed my private
files.

Cloud computing and related stuff is very useful for some
applications, but is far from being the best (or even an acceptable)
solution to most problems.

Tamas
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