Scientific American Article: Internet-Spanning OS

Hell O'World writes: "Interesting article on Scientific American outlining what they call an Internet-scale operating system (ISOS). 'The Internet-resource paradigm can increase the bounds of what is possible (such as higher speeds or larger data sets) for some applications, whereas for others it can lower the cost.'"

Comments

And what about the bandwidth?

[NOT-2-QUICK]

From the supposed real-life example in the article:

"Its disk contains, in addition to Mary's own files, encrypted fragments of thousands of other files. Occasionally one of these fragments is read and transmitted; it's part of a movie that someone is watching in Helsinki."

I wonder how upset this individual in Helsinki would be if Mary decided to format her hard disk in the midst of his movie... Oh, but you say that the same information is distributed on other workstations as a redundancy precaution. I wonder how much bandwidth that cost to prevent this 'just in case' scenario?

While I can certainly appreciate the added value of distributed processing power and multilocational data sources, exactly how is having these massive amounts of data running over the net affecting bandwidth availability?

In my opinion, the lack of a truly distributed ISOS is a bit trivial until we achieve a higher grade of internet connectivity for everyone!

We don't want "The Network As A Computer"

[refactored]

Good Grief! People's memories are short.

We don't want "The Network Is The Computer". Remember mainframes? Remember how we joyfully fled from them?

What we want is to really own our computer power.

We want a very clear sense of "This is my computer" and "This is my data". I can do what I like with it.

Think folks, what is all the fuss about security and file sharing? Ownership. This is my data to own (keep private) and my data to share (if I choose).

Complexity and installation difficulties steal our sense of ownership. When the computer is a burden, we don't want to own it. Complexity robs us of choice.

The correct fix is not an ISOS, or retreat to mainframe days. The correct fix is to simplify and make things easy.

I don't want my work computer to be my home computer. My employer and I definitely want a strong sense of separation on that front thank you.

Forget these silly pipe dreams, and concentrate on easing the pains of ownership so that we have strength to share.

All this is a silly confusion over....

• What I do and can do... (I want unlimited freedom and choice)
• What intellectual product I create... (It costs nothing to make another copy, so why limit distribution?)
• What hard product I create... (It costs much effort to make a copy, and requires hard inputs.)
• What I own... (What I control)
• What is private... (Thoughts and activities that concern me only thank you)

Remove the confusion between the above items and the desire for silly things like "The Network Is The Computer", DMCA etc goes away.

Re:We don't want "The Network As A Computer"

[gwernol]

We don't want "The Network Is The Computer". Remember mainframes? Remember how we joyfully fled from them?

And remember what happened when the Internet came along? Everyone suddenly wanted to be part of a network of machines. Of course the Internet is a diverse set of services running on a diverse and redundant network of machines rather than dumb terminals attached to controlled and homogenous hardware, so its a great step forward from the days of mainframes. Nevertheless the Internet is very much a distributed computer system.

When I use Slashdot I am consuming resources on a remote computer. These days I probably use more CPU power and storage that lives out on the Net than lives on my machine. I don't know about you, but I love it. Much better than the days of standalone machines.

What has happened is we've moved from the days of monolithic, tightly controlled mainframes and terminals, through the personal computer revolution and on to a mixed peer-to-peer and client-server world that gives you the advantages of both approaches.

Of course there are issues, and security and control are amongst the biggest. But these can be solved ultimately, and I no more want to go back to standalone PCs than I want to go back to mainframes.

What we want is to really own our computer power.

Then disconnect your machine from the Net, and you will be happy. However don't presume to speak for the vast majority of computer users who seem extremely happy to be part of a large, distributed network of machines and systems.