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Everyone Needs a Personal Server
An anonymous reader writes "Intel Labs is prototyping a potentially revolutionary new 'personal server'. The tiny device -- smaller than a PDA -- comprises a hard disk, BlueTooth, a Web-DAV enabled HTTP daemon, and other technologies enabling the user to access and modify their files from any enabled PC within their "Personal Area Network." In theory, this would allow the worker to access their own data -- essentially to have their own PC -- at any suitable workstation as long as the personal server were nearby. This article at LinuxDevices.com provides background on the personal server concept, explains how the device will enable a truly mobile experience, discusses the basic technologies involved, and provides an architectural block diagram of the prototype, which is based on an XScale Processor running at 400MHz running an embedded Linux OS."
Sounds interesting, but how secure that kind of device can be?
Brings a whole new meaning to mobile computing ;-)
Looks as thought they havent decided on a Wifi standard. Are they perhaps waiting for something?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Yep, they thought the same thing on May 4th.
And michael posted that story, as well.
Yet another dupe from Team Slashdot.
And these tits actually want the readers to pay...
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
Looks like an also ran to DaveNetworks design here: http://www.davenw.com/main.html
Seems to be a dupe. http://slashdot.org/articles/03/05/04/2012257.shtm l
Turkeyphant
what you want me to lug my phone, pda, mp3 player, digital camera and now a server as well.
Robin hand me my utility belt and a bandolier of batteries.
an iPod is already 2/3s of that
add wireless and http and presto!
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
I travel a /lot/ -- and I have a need to have my data accessable from anywhere in the world whenever I want it. I have servers in 3 countries connected together for most things, but for very large files (or sets of files) this is really impractical and can get very expensive. So I carry two 120GB USB drives with me wherever I go. These drives are pretty bulky, but they do allow me to do what this "personal server" is promoting - access my data from any workstation.
I don't really need a webserver with me, since that is better placed on a server that I don't unplug. This feature is pretty useless for me. Nor is bluetooth really practical to me, since USB is much wider supported than bluetooth on the machines I might sit at.
What I really need is are smaller portable harddrives with bigger capacities (200GB to start would be nice) that are network-aware. Just plug in an ethernet cable and mount it.
Sun: Introducting Cobalt Qube (not very consumer friendly, but it gets the job done; discontinued)
.NET (access your files anywhere, anytime. One catch - your files are not your property)
Linux/BSD: We had this for years, but it takes a rocket scientist to figure out how to secure a small server and maintain it; not consumer friendly but effective)
Microsoft: Introducing
Intel: Lets build a box for the regular Joe so he can access their files anytime, from anywhere, if he has an always-on connection.
Linux community: Lets hack together a working alternative that works out of the box and runs of dirt cheap hardware and even grandma can use it. Just like we did with MythTV and other lesser known PVRs
Apple: Introducing iPersonalServe
SCO: It was our idea all along!
I have a great idea. You can transport your files from one computer to another. i think i'll call it... WAIT! It's been done! it's called A fucking disk!
if you want to be tech wiz, you could even buy a USB memory card. WOOO!
Sure the idea has merits. If they ever can the installed base of the ground. Say that every PC in world is enabled in this way. Then yes I could take this light device with me and while waiting at the airport work at a supplied terminal. While in the aircraft use the PC in the seat to work. Then while at the client use their PC's to hold my presentation.
Slight snag. This is not likely to happen. Most companies don't even like their own employees to attach hardware to the network let alone complete strangers. Let alone a black box device. We all heard the horror storie about people installing modded consoles in the walls to comprimise security at big offices. This make it even easier.
It sounds to me like kermit. To those of you who do not know what kermit is it was a mobile phone that only worked in hotsports. So it worked for a few years while everyone used payphones or carphones until cellphones became cheap. Just as now everyone will use something like a USB pendrive/iPod style/external HD device or pda/laptop. The first are cheap and light and will usually work. The second are expensive heavy but at least can work on their own.
Perhaps this will work for big companies in highly specialized situations. I just can't think of any where existing tech like the ones I mentioned wouldn't do just as well.
Can anyone else perhaps point out what I missed?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Does it do anything an ordinary laptop and my servers at home + dyndns don't do perfectly well already?
....that this thing runs linux, but looks like it requires Windoze XP to run? Tell me that was just what they tested it with.
What I really need is are smaller portable harddrives with bigger capacities (200GB to start would be nice) that are network-aware. Just plug in an ethernet cable and mount it.
The Snap Appliance Server 1100 is pretty close. It's a little large, but not too bad. It's something that's much more useful to me than this "personal server". But the cost is outrageous. About 800USD for a 120GB networked drive? Considering I can get a 160GB USB drive in Japan for under 200USD now, the extra 600USD does not justify the cost of adding ethernet.
I guess I'll just have to wait, someone's bound to come out with something. For now I'm just thinking of picking up one of those brick-PCs and mounting my drives to that (especially as I need more) and just connecting that to the network wherever I am.
This is not only a really good, cool idea, it's cutting edge. It both explores and expands the limits of what is possible with computer technology today, taking a number of ideas whose time has come and combining them in a unique and interesting way to create a unique, useful device that fufills a function and purpose no one else had up until that point been able to fufill in one product.
INTEL did this??
**head explodes**
They won't let me plug my laptop in to the company network, but they're going to let me attach this to my PC wirelessly? Yeah, right.
sig hup Cox; sig hup Microsoft; wake up Intel. Cox and other ISPs need to stand up to Microsoft and media interests or die. Don't give me bull about dynDNS, I want to live upright. I don't need a windoze computer to pop up a silly icon and comprimise all my personal and company data. The good folks at Intel need to realize that people already do this and contribute to projects like Open Zaurus that make it easier, rather than to Microsoft because Microsoft will work to prevent, pervert and control the whole effort. If your data is not on a free platform, someone else owns it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Someone asks where the cover sheets for your TPS reports are, you'll truely be able to point at your brain and say, "It's all right here." :)
-=-This sig brought to you by The Cheat; and by Viewers Like You.-=-
I use a USB 2.0 enabled 30 gig portable hard drive pocketec.net (I see they now come larger as well) between multiple computers at home and office so I no longer need to carry a laptop. (And it's as small as my Palm unit) Now if I could access this through my PDA? Add a fold out/roll out keyboard? and a small display, give me WiFi and bluetooth through to my new Treo 600 and I'd dump the laptop for good!
This goes a little further than raw disk access or network filesystem. The purpose of the webserver isn't to serve files to someone else but you (it can do that, but it can also do more). Its purpose is an access restriction layer on top of the data. You're using potentially unsafe systems to access your information, so you don't want to risk any more data than what you're actually working on at a time. Let's say you have a phonebook-like database on your personal server. If you made it available as network storage (or worse, raw disk access), all the data is up for grabs. If you interface to the database through a web-application running on your trusted hardware, the risk is substantially smaller (Though I'd wish for a minimal display and two buttons, "YES" and "NO", on the hardware itself to form some sort of trusted terminal).
just walk around with a small, large capacity usb 2.0 harddisk? Seems to me none of the existing wifi technologies have the bandwidth to run applications over them (at least WinXP apps, maybe XFree86 or someother network oriented windowing system could do it). And why a 400mhz processor in what's essensially a storage device? Looks like another rather silly use of wifi for it's own sake, but maybe I'm missing something here.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
This goes a little further than raw disk access or network filesystem. The purpose of the webserver isn't to serve files to someone else but you (it can do that, but it can also do more). Its purpose is an access restriction layer on top of the data.
Sure, I can appreciate that. But why not just a networked harddrive with an encrypted filesystem? And the mimimal display could just be the IP address. (So many places where DNS/ReverseDNS doesn't work correctly), but DHCP almost always works.
This advertisement brought to you by an Anonymous Intel PR Rep
Why not use an iPod? You can store more than just mp3s on these things. It charges off the firewire port. very small. and it plays music. :)
Microsoft Windows runs on stress and frustration.
Why not use an iPod? You can store more than just mp3s on these things. It charges off the firewire port. very small. and it plays music. :)
I like the idea -- but 30GB is not nearly enough. If Apple releases a 200GB iPod at a reasonable price, hell yeah, I'd buy it.
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00008RCNI.01.M
Seriously, this is a neat idea to have a pocket server
especially if someone asks to see your website.
You can just take it out of your pocket and show them.
that if the designers had any sense they'd put OS level stuff in ROM -- there'd be no hax0ring that baby :)
Well, at least I won't have any problems emulating a dial up connection for web development...
I still preffer my 486dx2 running bsd and apache
What everyone needs is not a personal server which would turn any computer into their own personal computer but, instead, what every a little device which would turn any display into their own personal terminal (make that X terminal). Remove the storage component from this device and add wireless connectivity to it instead, and then you'd have something that the world needs because it would essentially eliminate the need for the personal computer. And this device could be small enough to be built into clothing or worn as jewelry.
Intel needs to boost sales for their over-hyped ARM processors. Intel spends a wicked amount of money creating useless devices to help sell more processors. As a result, Intel's non-processor groups suffer from constant re-organizations.
I've been pretty active on slash for the last week or so after a pretty long break from it. Just as a side OT note, how come we're all posting to /. right now?
The first reply to this article was at 3:00 am, mine's being posted at 4:45 am. Shouldn't we all be in bed or something? I don't care about the moderation of this comment, I got 2 +5's in the last day or so, plenty of karma to burn.
If Apple added wireless & http to the next iPod and marketed it as a must have because of the free, built in iServe software, it would be massive! On launch, ensure it works with Macs and Windows then watch them fly off the shelves!
I realized they were talking about a computer.
KFG
Looks to me like the idea is basically ubiquitous access to your data.
I'll grant them that it _is_ innovative to create a device like this which abstracts the access method to the portable data behind open protocols such as tcpip, but I still get the feeling they're going about it in a lopsided manner.
You move, but this doesn't mean the data must move with you to be accessible. This is one of the ideas with X, your data is plonked on a machine somewhere far off, and you conect to it and presto, you and your data are one.
I feel effort and time invested in ubiquitous connectivity will do far more to address the need to access one's data than working on solutions like this.
Kudos still, the idea is interesting.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Well, if Intel puts a linux inside this device, we already know whom SCO is going to sue next.
Looks like a pen. Writes like a pen.
But it's not a real pen. It contains 512 MB (or so) of flash, which is shared via bluetooth. A 10cm high retractable gain antenna is hidden within the length of the pen itself, and powered by a single AAA battery. Walk by an enabled PC, optionally type in a password, and all your documents, your keyring, etc. are available. Think of the security holes. Finally, as an added bonus, when you write on paper (or anything for that matter, toilet paper springs to mind), you can choose to record your scribbles on the flash drive. Tiny gyroscopic sensors determine the motion of the pen across the page, and a pressure sensor determines whether the pen is against a writing surface. Each time you expose the ball point head it creates a new file, and when you retract it, it closes it. You can tell which file is which by the timestamps.
THAT would kick butt. And as embedded logic gets more powerful, you could have a personal web/email/aim server running in there too. A wireless iPod sounds nifty, but where's the innovation people? Where is Microsoft?
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
The article is focusing on its use as a portable hard disk even though it really is a portable wireless server.
A USB keychain drive seems to fill this role better. If all I want is portability of my files I dont really need the CPU, the web server, etc..
Let me get this straight. I'm supposed to carry around this little box with all my data on it so that when I get somewhere that has a keyboard and screen and knows how to talk to this box, I can log in and access my data. What's wrong with this picture? Why do I need to carry around this box? Why do I want to carry around data? That's what the Internet is for.
Remember Java-enabled jewelry with onboard crypto? The RSA "fob" ID device? Dallas Semiconductor buttons? Same functional capabilities, less to carry. All you really need is an ID device.
Ubiquitous computing looks more like "hurry up and find something that wastes compute power before we have to have another layoff". They need some better ideas over there.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
I carry a laptop from home to work. I have a port replicator in both places and kbd, lcd,.. is basically dead weight. If you could make a PC the size of a laptop with a desktop processor (cheaper) but no screen, kbd, mouse then I would definitely be in for this. You would have to guarantee backward compatibility on the docking station so don't need to buy new ones every time I upgrade. You would have to do carefull weight/price/lifetime calculations for deciding what goes in the brick and what in the docking station (power supply, cdrom?). This would also work in these "floating" offices where every employee does not have a fixed desk assigned (very popular in Brussels right now, how about your place?). What they describe here just seems like another expensive add-on. I would look for sth which replaces my current hardware store.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
For me the keyword "server", as in data storage device, immediately triggered the thought of "backup" and then "security".
What a nightmare for a company to have a personal server for each of their employees who store all kinds of stuff on it, never even thinking about the implications. Of course that isn't really worse than everybody having a notebook computer, only that it would double the number of devices. Hm, maybe it would be better to have these boxes, if they are more secure and can be backed up easier than notebooks. Somehow I doubt this.
With this nice device everyone will be able to see my Silvia Saint movies while I'm jerking off in the public bathroom...
I've long envisioned something similar. At least in intent.
... so that there is the hardware platform. On top of that is a generic device-driver layer. The OS, ANY OS, would be contained on your own card (or other device), to be plugged into a port on the machine. Your OS, your configuration, your software, your files... on any computer you sit down at.
For a couple of years now, I've thought it would be neat to have a card or keychain attachment or something similarly small/portable, to store all of a person's files. Pictures, documents, etc..
Then I had another idea. What about having their *settings* stored as well? Their choice of options for various programs, or even the OS itself. Envision this for a moment: Windows 2007 or Slackware 12 having built-in or addable functions to read one of these cards/devices... and modify things like keymap, GUI color scheme, accessibility features...
Or even having programs themselves. So that any computer running the appropriate OS (and in this case, an OS could be a barebones software-hardware interface layer, meaning it could even be a *generic* OS) could load up the personalized settings, options, client programs, and personal files of anyone who popped in their card.
Once memory technologies can handle it, I think it would be very neat (as well as useful!) for computers to change dramatically
Crazy. But just in case anyone tries to DO this... consider this post to be my prior art evidence, and prepare to pay royalties. Because this could be a powerful and profitable concept.
"The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants." --Thomas Jefferson
Give the thing a nice 5"-display, some keys and a pen and call it a Server-PDA or Storage-PDA. Keep remote-Administration still an option. Now you've got something interesting.
The keyfeature is "a portable large storage with own intelligence". A PDA is nearly the thing needed except it is missing a harddrive.
Trying to avoid display and HID sound like a bad idea to safe $20 by dropping most standalone usability.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
Karmic rewards are your ANONYMOUS READER for using comprise correctly. Truly, you are a shining light to the rest of us. I salute you!
... everyone needs a personal lawyer.
The Ximeta NetDisk 80GB looks like what you want.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
(Best line from a movie review ever: "Keanu Reaves is miscast as someone with too much information in his head")
I just read the article at LinuxDevices. "Cool!" I thought and went straight to Intel's pages about UPnP, where I read with delight that the code is free and even for linux, too.
.tgz, .zip. Gha.
But: They only provide some self-extracting archives, there!
I'd really like to test those things on my embedded platforms, but no
Thanks! Yeah, the NDU10-160 (160GB) version is pretty close to what I want. Except that it's Windows-only (requires a windows app to access). The price is pretty good 299USD for 160GB networked drive is reasonable. I think I'll pick this one up for my next drive!
There's a reason collaboration tools and intranet sites abound in the workplace - the information is not personal to a person anymore; but the unit. I think we can also name several places where carrying your own data with you; with no centralized control; will be a no-no: think places where GMP rules are in place and in organizations where data is considered sensitive or people require a clearance to work there.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
Isn't this really nothing more than some elaborate and over invented password that required a battery to work?
.... Well so does the ram stick or such...... But these other don't need a battery.
You know what, there is this project to clone the Amiga3.1 OS into Open Source and Freely Available OS. It's a very small and efficient OS that doesn't have all the multi-user over head (AROS on sourceforge) and here is an Idea better than this Personal Server battery powered password..
Put the OS on a ram drive strip or other such memeory device that is small and portable, your choice (USB) that provides connection to any system.
Set your personal OS up as you see fit and take it with you on your keychain or Business card CD...
Since this Personal Server IBM is doing needs the hardware of devices having human I/O
Ok Plug your personal OS into any system and AROS runs either hosted or native, but Hosted in any event you have access to whatever... using the network connectivity of the system you plugged into.
If the Hurd ever gets done enough to have a public release, it'll be interesting as to how well AROS (via the ol'amiga arexx port concept(IPC)) can tap into the resources of the all of Gnu...
NO BATTERIES NEEDED.... coppertop!!
Is it just me, or wasn't this on /. a long time ago? I guess there has been a lot of progress since then, but I do remember hearing about a personal server device that Intel was working on a while ago.
This kind of reminds me of OQO too. What ever happened to that project? Seems dead: www.oqo.com.
I travel a /lot/ -- and I have a need to have my data accessable from anywhere in the world whenever I want it.
/huge/ -- I have to keep the unconverted art handy (different versions) and the final game-ready art handy as well (different versions) for different projects. I just can't d/l this much data from the internet - especially when we want it encrypted over public lines -- scp/sftp is many things, but fast it is not.
I think you need to see someone about your addiction to pr0n
I know you were just trying to be funny. But lugging around data is a serious problem for me. I'm a game developer and I usually have different projects going on at different sites in different countries -- and some modern console games are
Wow, I didn't realise anyone placed such high importance on their porn collection. Adds new meaning to "personal server".
my servers at home
Most residential users don't have the money for an Internet connection with that kind of acceptable use policy.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It's called the X-Box.
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
refering to Microsoft as "M$" is retarded.
10 LET M$ = "Microsoft"
It saves typing.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Gotta admit being a little disappointed by this.
For those of you who didn't RTFA: This is essentially a little hard drive which rides around in your backpack (note: I don't carry a backpack all the time; do you?) and can connect, wirelessly, to any machine you access which recognizes wireless devices. Basically, as far as I can tell, this has the same net effect as having a home directory on an NFS server someplace and using it to save your settings as you move from machine to machine.
Again: Bo-ring.
When I saw "personal server, no IO", I was hoping this would be a manifestation of the keystone portion of my idea for a personal wireless network Your devices would all notice one another, and the width of functionality of any given device would be dependant on what you were carrying. If you we out taking pictures with your digicam and were carrying a server, the images would be transfered to the (presumably very expansive) drive in the server. If you had your cell phone, the images would be sent off to your home computer, as well.
Repeat en masse. PDAs display and do I/O, headphones play music and the real work is taken care of automagically behind the scenes in some secure fashion. You'd effectively allow the elimination of multi-use devices which don't do any job very well by allowing your devices to play their strong points, and you could customize your loadout just in what you grab in the morning when you're loading your pockets.
Anyhow, this ain't it, and that's disappointing -- somebody must have hit my verbosity flag today, and I'm sincerely sorry for the pain that I've caused you all...
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
you conect to it
Not with most cable Internet providers.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The guy in the CDW commercial can drink that little bottle of champagne now.
It's call ed pocket USB hard drive.
plug it in the usb port, and I have yet to find a computer + os that cannot access/read it except for filesystem issues.. (I use FAT32)
Why would I want something that I need to recharge nightly and could be accessed in the subway without my knowlege?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
then you can realy use bluetooth for what it was intended, a personal space network.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Why can't they just weave this sort of data server into clothing? Average user could get by with a thong while a slashdot user would likely need long johns.
I drank what? -- Socrates
No physical security, just walk off with the thing.
High overhead - support a few servers is overhead enough.
How do you back them up?
Assume a user could even understand this concept. As if. They still think the H:\ is the box under their desk.
There's really no point to this fucking thing.
Right idea. Wrong form factor.
Try putting it in a watch.
Look, Bluetooth has about a 10 meter (10 yard) radius if you can't keep intruders out of your house or the cubes right next to you, you have more important worries than your PAN server security
Me, I want a PAN server asap. Great idea.
To steal your employers valuable documents and IP!
Products like this (and USB thumb drives, flash drives, etc) must give corporate security guys nightmares.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - BF
And I don't think that this personal server thingie would be much cheaper than a laptop, do you?
A "personal server thingie" would not need a complicated display controller nor a large display. It would also not need the batteries to run those components.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The NetDrive was a Bluetooth technology demonstrator developed in cooperation with the Information Technology research department at Lunds Technical University (LTH).
For more information about the Ericsson NetDrive, see the following links (Some are Shorlified):
Page with picture of the Ericsson NetDrive (scroll down a bit) Shorl: http://shorl.com/bajovigyhegry
Detailed report (PDF) on the NetDrive from the LTH IT department. Includes pictures of the design, board, SW-subsystem etc http://www.it.lth.se/it/projects/NetDrive/NetDrive .pdf
One: it's not secure. I'm responsible for corporate security within our group - no way you're bringing this into my network. Already we've got hard problems with floppies, USB keys, laptops, etc - this is just as dangerous
Two: If you want session/data portability for the enterprise, then Sun (and probably others) are already building it with the Java card and thin-client solutions - unplug the Java card, fly to the other side of the world, plug it back in to your corporate SunRay there, say hello to your session again. Same data, same security, same access rules. That's much more useful to me (along with properly secure remote access - which is another box of tricks altogether) than the object described in this article.
Dan Shannon
dan period shannon atsign optusnet punctuationmark com dot au
PointServers.org has been working on this for a while.o n.html
http://www.pointservers.org/depth-evoluti
A personal relay would be a better idea. Basically, an 802.11 device that hooks you up to the net (assuming that by the time these things come out we'll have the world blanketed in wifi) that hooks you up to some kind of storage server. All the other devices you wear will be low power bluetooth and simply use the 802.11 device to actually connect to the net.
Photos.
If a personal file server (which fits in the whole bluetooth connectivity thing in theory) were available, my digital camera would only have to be the lens and a little bit of memory until the picture had been sent to the file server and then could be erased. My mp3 player could become little more than a streaming audio reciever -- heck I wouldn't really need it seperate from my digital camera. And, since we've seen this already, why couldn't the camera, mp3 player and cellphone all be in one? Or, and maybe this is stretching this a bit, couldn't it all be integrated with my PDA? the PDA would simply be the interface for the file server. It would be as thin as an lcd screen (no processor needed because it's a dummy client) and then a jack for headphones.
The biggest snag with my scenario is that bluetooth has never worked like it should due to proprietary communications etc. If that can ever get ironed out (a la Betamax vs. VHS) then maybe we can start to see this actually happening from a device consolidation point of view.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
I thought there already *exists* such a device!!X /whats/ind ex.html
/ body/?wb_url=htt p%3A%2F%2Fwww.sony.jp%2Fproducts%2FConsumer%2FPGX% 2Fproducts%2Findex.html&submit=%83E%83F%83u%83y%81 %5B%83W%96%7C%96%F3&wb_lp=JAEN&wb_dis=3&wb_co=exci tejapan
http://www.sony.jp/products/Consumer/PG
translation:
http://www.excite.co.jp/world/url
And, I think this Sony FSV-PGX1 has already been mentioned on slashdot months ago too!
This is old news ;-) Back in May, baard.com reported on this.
I thought the Personal Server was so neat, I wrote my own article based on the baard.com info, Science Fiction becomes science-fact.
Everyone knows that "Server Operating Systems" cost three times as much as "Workstation Operating Systems. Why would an individual need such power?
*and don'tmention Linux, please. The distinction used to ignorable, but SCO seems intent on reimposing that ancient pricing model.
Intel has it all wrong - and Berkley has it right.
http://oceanstore.cs.berkeley.edu/
Check out OceanStore software for building a fully reliable network where users can access their files from any connected machine. It's also fully redundant too.
The biggest flaw of the personal server is that your data is subject to physical desctruction at anytime. The server can give you portability, but it can't give you reliability.
As high speed connections become ubiquitous across the globe, OceanStore will be the real way of storing your information, encrypted, and replicated across many nodes in the global network - it would be possible to have access to your "personal files" from anywhere in the world. Not only that - you will never have to worry about backing up again.
Gnome Storage
Huh? The iPod is a consumer device that, while needing a computer to load songs onto it, is completely standalone and fulfills a nearly universal niche.
This stupid thing is just a USB hard drive without the cables. Yeah, I know, it does more than that, but the basic function of it is to allow you move data from computer to computer. I'm guessing that the market of people who need a device to move gigs of data from computer to computer is just a teensy bit smaller than the market of people who like to listen to music. In my life (and I work as a sysadmin at HP, so I know more than my share of nerds), I know maybe two people who would get real use out of this, and maybe one more who would buy it for the gee-whiz factor but have no real use for it. I know at least a dozen people with iPods or other hard-drive-based MP3 players.
You do not want to carry around hardware and your files with you. You want to maybe make a local copy of an ideal virtual machine, which has all your apps and your data and your computing environment. See my paper on The Linux Personal Virtual Server
Their website seems to indicate that they're planning to release software for Mac and Linux sometime in the future.
But what if the person was walking behind you in a crowd. Its the new war-walking rage!
Although the form factor needs to be scaled down (can we say flash drive?). I think the idea is awesome. Think of being able to walk around and Any time you need to look at something, you sit down, and the computer automatically recognizes your presence. Think of a little egg shape on your keyring. You go anywhere and can use a computer just as you would at home. Now there is no need for a computer in the home. Think of the revolution that would cause. Other awesome uses. Have it talk to credit card machines to purchase items. Have it talk to coke machines. Have it talk to digital personal shoppers. This is a fantastic idea, and we need to look beyond that fact that its a hard drive with blue tooth. If this was implamented in large scale, it could revolutionize computing as well as our economy.
But how do we USE it...
Make these cheap...
We'll really suck em up fast!
Mod power packs to facilitate longer usage
with wi-fi
But what if the person was walking behind you in a crowd. Its the new war-walking rage!
Good idea -don't run personal server or count money or pick nose or uninate or walk naked or engage in loud political/religous monologues or other things you want to do in a secure, stable place, in a crowd of people on the steet.
...This personal server thing has been around for over a year now. When am I going to see "SANDIA LABS CREATES TIME TRAVEL DEVICE"...or, "NASA/USAF ANTIGRAVITY PROJECT REVEALED"??? C'mon /. give me what I want.
finally! a super mini pc. laptops are too big, i dont want my human I/O integrated, too bulky. pda's interfaces are too shit. just gimme a portable centrino based processor and a SATA cable to a laptop hard drive i can put in my other pocket.
and dual video outs.'
What you fail to realize though is that 10 meters is a sizeable distance. Its not just the people in the cubicles nearby or your house. What if you live in an apartment building. I don't know how Bluetooth handles through floors and ceilings, but that could be a potential issue. Or what if you're on the bus? Or walking down the street?
So yes, you may have bigger problems if you can't keep people out of your house, or trust your coworkers, but what about everybody else in the world who you might use this near?
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You could do most of what this thing does with a key chain memory and a Knoppix disk.
http://www.devside.net ...has instructions on building a server for win32 and linux.
I doubt that will happen anytime soon because ipods use a 1.8" drive manufactured by Toshiba. And currently the largest 1.8" drive made by them is 30gigs and the largest 2" drive is 80gigs.
Microsoft Windows runs on stress and frustration.
It would make for cool public use computers! Just carry around a knoppix CD, personal server, and bluetooth adapter and any PC is your own personal setup. Note this can be done now with USB hard drives, but the wireless aspect [firewire, USB, and ethernet would work as well] lets you connect all the devices without fidgiting with lots of buttons. Snap pics with the phone-camera, save them on the little box, review meeting notes with your PDA on the train to work, etc.
It's Ingmar, my mute butler!
Do I get brownie points for making a Freakazoid reference?
You missed an important application: computer labs.
I know I live in the dark ages, but at my university there are several rooms on the main campus with general access terminals and jacks to plug in your laptop. Using a Bluetooth personal server, what is to say I can't access the personal servers of the 25 other students within five meters of me?
But that becomes irrelevant, since even a simple secure login or encrypted connection should clean it up. God knows you wouldn't leave your stuff on a public share without a password!
I read about these devices over a year ago..
Intel's 'Personal Server': The Handheld Killer? (Sunday, 4-May-2003)
How to Download YouTube Videos
Sony's had a wireless file server PGX1 out in Japan for several months now. It's not really pocket size but doesn't take much space or add much weight in a bag at only 390g. It stores 20GB and supports CIFS, NFS and FTP connections over 802.11b. It's also dockable with a wired ethernet connection when direct access is desired. Configuration is via LCD display or web browser.
See the FSV-PGX1 at Sony's Portable File Server page for details (in Japanese of course).
Just keep a bootable system on your iPod, plug in, restart host, boot from iPod, you have your whole system.
John
I have linux on my IPAQ 3875, I know some people are usinging it on their 39XX IPAQs for that Xscale goodness. I think my StrongARM is more then fast enough though. This intel thing is reall not *much* smaller then my IPAQ + compact flash sleve + microdrive. It probably won't be *much* cheaper anyway because all you really are getting rid of is the display. Yes this will lower the cost but not more then 25% I would imagine. So why not the personal server software on a PDA platform where you DO have I/O incase there is no other pc around. It seems so easy to have the best of both worlds here. I already do. I use remote X to display my PDA on my home and work PCs, its really nice for data entry. I could eaisly run and instance of httpd on the IPAQ as well to get closer to the ture concept here but I would never want to not have the touch screen as hard as it is to work with sometime I want to look of a phone number when there are no desktops or laptops around. PDA/personal_server seems like a much better idea to me.
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The article claims this requires a bluetooth stack and "custom middleware components" installed on the Windows XP machine they are connecting this to (never-the-less the actual bluetooth hardware...). I'm sorry, but I don't want to have to do that on every computer I sit down at in order to access my files (which they are storing... on an HTTP server?!?... I have yet to see an implementation of a WebDAV file server that is anything near as fast for block file reads as a real file system).
:). _I'll_ still buy it... :).
From the article:
"The host infrastructure is implemented using a standard Windows XP system augmented with a Bluetooth stack and custom middleware components. The host infrastructure is responsible for discovering mobile devices and providing common access protocols. In order to facilitate device discovery, a discovery monitor runs on the host and periodically searches for Personal Servers, automatically connecting using a Bluetooth PAN (Personal Area Network) profile when one is found."
The bluetooth option is nice, but it shouldn't be the main way to contact the device. Besides, have you ever looked into the bluetooth transfer rates? 723kb/s or 90kB/s. Loading that 5 megabyte powerpoint presentation with all the pretty graphics at the target site is going to take almost a minute. Although, that time is definitely going to be swamped by the time it will take to install all of the "custom middleware" and figure out why the stupid bluetooth card doesn't want to get recognized no matter how many times you reinstall the drivers... I have a feeling the Wi-Fi interface will get 99.99999% of all usage from this device.
And even then I wonder how the Wi-Fi interface is going to work... is it just going to DHCP itself an IP address? Based on all the other wonderful decisions they seem to have made for this product I'm going to bet they are going to require even more software to be installed on the host to search for the device out on the network somewhere... *sigh*.
Give me a device that size with the standard USB hard drive interface (and therefor requiring no software on the target machine, just an available USB port, something almost every computer I've dealt with in the last few years has had), and then we'd be getting closer.
Give me an iPOD (with their nice small format hard drives) that has the standard USB hard drive interface and I'd buy it immediately. [ Note that the Archos, the closest device I've seen to that last vision, sucks (it's much too large, much too heavy, I hear it has crappy sound quality, and I _believe_ it is only USB 1.1, although I might be wrong on that last count). ]
As far as I can tell the reason the last one isn't happening is due to the whole SMDI initiative or whatever; rights management and all that. Here's my response: if you demand that all of the mp3 files on the device got copied using the DRM compliant software installed on my home PC, fine. But if I'm going to carry around a 5GB hard drive I want to be able to store my 25MB of documents on it using the standard USB harddrive interface. Encrypt the fuck out of the mp3 files, see if I care
If rewriteable DVD technology standardizes enough at some point, you could use that; otherwise you can fit most of what you need on a CR-RW, as long as you're not using a bloatware email client that encourages you to keep gigabyte mailbox files.
For any of these approaches, you need some kind of file update / synchronization software or automatic backup software so that your portable storage gets backed up on a probably more stable disk environment (depending on your individual skills and your company's, that may be home or work :-) Microsoft Windows Briefcase seems to be intended for this kind of thing, but backup software could do it too.
Bill Stewart
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Well yes you can but it takes a mechanical or electrical failure to do it. ROMs stand for Read Only Memory. You can not overwrite them. What everyone seems to bet talking about is FLASH RAM. Or maybe EEPROMs. BTW the best solution to the FLASH being overwriten is a ROM. Have a reset switch that boots the device from a simple bootstrap rom. Then have it use a USB connection to a host computer to reload the OS into FLASH.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
So great, I've got everything stored on my matchbox-sized widget and the low power light is blinking. How is that helpful?
My mobile is a dinky little thing but its charger doubles the form factor and creates hassle. If it doesn't get a charge for more than a few days it dies - maybe faster if I'm using it a lot. If I'm meant to be accessing this personal server constantly, I doubt it'll last long with a tiny battery - so I'll be constantly plugging it in anyway.
It sounds cool in theory but until there's a way to power it and still keep it small, I can't see it being useful in practice.