You’re thinking about how people are currently using their devices instead of thinking about how they will be. You could access your computer from any internet connected device, anywhere.
Hook up your oculus rift to their paperweight and have a full powered computer anywhere (with internet access).
While they are mentioning you can use AutoCad, I'd say that is merely to show that it can handle intensive applications. The majority wants to be able to surf the internet, and with this, you would never need to buy another computer again. For the random times you need to run Photoshop it can do it and will scale up to it, other times it scales down to handle your reddit addiction.
Look at how many people use Dropbox, iCloud, Google drive, etc etc. Everyone is already ok with storing their files in a datacenter. Privacy issues or not, people have accepted it is fact and the high majority already do it. That's not to say it is right, but it's a given that people want convenience over privacy.
Buying a Macbook air costs around 1k. And most people seem to upgrade ever 4-6 years. This costs $10/month. The cost savings are blatant. I know I’m comparing it with a mac and they are overpriced and you could do so much better, blah blah blah.
The fact is that if latency problems can be overcome, there is really no reason beside privacy that one needs to own and maintain their own computer. Rented space that you pay monthly for is cheaper, and will adapt to fit your specific needs. It works much better for a internet connected society to share several supercomputers then for individuals to each own their own.
If data provides competitive advantage, while compute is commoditized, there is no need for a false dichotomy between cloud and local. Future hybrid architecture can fluidly move the line between local and distributed compute, including other-peoples-algorithms, fusing local (secure, private, competitive, licensed) data/algos with public data/algos.
Local storage and local compute continue to fall in cost.
As long as humans remain sensitive to subsecond latency of repeated stimulus, and the speed of light remains unchanged, local user interfaces will offer competititve advantages.
> Future hybrid architecture can fluidly move the line between local and distributed compute, including other-peoples-algorithms, fusing local (secure, private, competitive, licensed) data/algos with public data/algos.
At the risk of sounding like a grumpy graybeard, it's impressive how all of these things have been implemented at least in Plan 9 for almost twenty years now.
Thanks for the pointer. Could you recommend any Plan9 docs on these features? Are Plan9 users mostly running on bare-metal or VMs? If the latter, would you recommend VMware, Xen or something else?
The Plan 9 documentation is pretty good, but 9front's introductory documents ( https://code.google.com/p/plan9front/wiki/fqa ) are probably a little better to get your feet wet with.
> Are Plan9 users mostly running on bare-metal or VMs? If the latter, would you recommend VMware, Xen or something else?
Both, I guess... VirtualBox is the only one I tried it on. Its distributed nature makes it fairly easy to run it on a server and connect to that from a system running Plan 9 from User Space (see http://swtch.com/plan9port/ ), so that you also get a... well, a functional desktop, I guess.
I can access my computer (computers, actually, all at home) now, from any internet connected device, anywhere. My "laptop" is an iPad with a keyboard, and with that, I can do remotely what I can do locally. It's just as convenient [1], no recurring charge and if the government (or law enforcement) ever becomes interested in my data, I'll have a chance to know about it, since my data resides at my house, not some company half a continent away.
[1] Nearly so---for me, there's no true replacement for an IBM model M keyboard.
I disagree with the "Dropbox, iCloud, Google drive" thing. Nobody is using them as a platform to work their files on, but more as a quick way of sharing files. not reliable to store or else.
Definitely not "nobody". I've had several clients where the dropbox folder was where work got done. For all of my non-git and non-movie projects, dropbox is where the files live and are worked on.
When a friend had his laptop stolen he said that it wasn't a big deal other than the money lost, as 90% of his files were in dropbox or Google drive.
In my world at least, this is the way the wind is blowing.
Hook up your oculus rift to their paperweight and have a full powered computer anywhere (with internet access).
While they are mentioning you can use AutoCad, I'd say that is merely to show that it can handle intensive applications. The majority wants to be able to surf the internet, and with this, you would never need to buy another computer again. For the random times you need to run Photoshop it can do it and will scale up to it, other times it scales down to handle your reddit addiction.
Look at how many people use Dropbox, iCloud, Google drive, etc etc. Everyone is already ok with storing their files in a datacenter. Privacy issues or not, people have accepted it is fact and the high majority already do it. That's not to say it is right, but it's a given that people want convenience over privacy.
Buying a Macbook air costs around 1k. And most people seem to upgrade ever 4-6 years. This costs $10/month. The cost savings are blatant. I know I’m comparing it with a mac and they are overpriced and you could do so much better, blah blah blah.
The fact is that if latency problems can be overcome, there is really no reason beside privacy that one needs to own and maintain their own computer. Rented space that you pay monthly for is cheaper, and will adapt to fit your specific needs. It works much better for a internet connected society to share several supercomputers then for individuals to each own their own.