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Jumping From Computer To Computer
Roland Piquepaille writes "Imagine a world where computers become so ubiquitous that the idea of carrying a laptop will almost be laughable, a world where any computer could be your computer! According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, this is the goal of Intel Research Pittsburgh's Internet Suspend/Resume (ISR) project, a project that may one day let your work jump from computer to computer without interruption by using the Internet, distributed file systems, and virtual machines. When the non-proprietary technology becomes available, a user will suspend a task on the computer he's working on, and resume this work using another computer in another part of a city or several thousands of miles away. The second system will look identical to the first one, with the same files and applications opened. This technology would also ease OS upgrades or eliminate the pain coming from a hard disk failure. The project has even a feature named Rollback which would permit to go back in time, eliminating these pesky viruses. A pilot test will start this fall, so don't expect to be able to use ISR for a while. You'll find more details and references in this overview."
I use scripts to sync my work all the time. I don't see what the big deal is here.
...so when Windows BSODs and you change to the next machine in the lab, you'll still have to sit and wait for it to restart?
From the article:
Despite their outward sameness, most computers are so personalized with desktop preferences and software that borrowing someone's computer can seem as creepy as borrowing their underwear.
Does this mean that borrowing someone else's underwear could be made less creepy if it were made to look like your own? Will we laugh at people someday for actually travelling with luggage- Ha ha, fools- I just use the underwear that is laying around at the hotel?!
Seriously, who would use this? How long will it be after introduction before someone comes up with a way to hack/hijack an Internet Suspend/Resume account and get all of your data?
Urge to post... fading... fading... RISING!... fading... fading... gone.
With SSH, "screen", VNC, and X-forwarding, whenever I approach a linux box, I feel right at home, knowing I can connect to my apps, files, and data with little trouble.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Running VNC or X remotely? Why is this so revolutionary?
- A
Computers keep shrinking and prices keep dropping. Why depend on a remote site to host your desktop when you could keep the same data in your watch, jackknife or wallet?
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Maybe the average Joe won't care but I would rather have everything stored on my laptop that I physically carry with me. Why would I trust a random computer? Boo these men.
http://www.rustyrazorblade.com
You mean, sort of like logging into an old VT100 or X terminal connected to a central computer system except on a larger scale?
OK, so let my just think a little bit here. You get a virus that remains dormant for say, 6 months. Then sudennly it does something really bad to your computer so what do you do? Rollback 1 day and have it screw up the next day or rollback 6 months and lose 6 months work? I think a litte more thought has to be put into that feature....Or maybe I should RTFA.
Sun's has had this working for years on Sun Ray thin clients. Your working session is frozen when you remove a smart card, and is resumed on another appliance when you put the smart card back in. It works all over the country, so a session can be resumed anywhere.
...doesn't eliminate the problem of pesky viruses and the like (file corruption, unnoticed errors...). You don't always inmediately notice something is wrong, so you keep working. To go back in time a few hours/days might not be an option, if malware hits with high frequency. A cvs-like system might do the trick, although.
(Just my two off-topic eurocents).
My journal. Mainly about freedom.
This would also make it very difficult for any non-standard OS (Linux, MacOS, BSD) to get a foothold once it gets going - I'd guess you would be pretty limited in just what you could have loaded in order to use this system.
I dunno. It's an interesting concept, but I have my doubts. I actually like managing my own systems. I'd rather have the control than hand it over to a company who's going to do upgrades without my knowledge.
Beautiful idea, but I want to carry his memory/state with me on a little and duplicable box or card.
What's in a sig?
resume my game of Command and Conquer Generals from anywhere? I can see the productivity numbers dropping off the chart already.
Moderation Insight
this seems like a sneaky and highly effective way to deploy global DRM, to me. Especially the bit about 'not troubling with OS upgrades'.
Apparently the ultimate goal is to eventually have ISR software running on every computer in the public domain. What is in this article is a good first step, but even if they can make the process and the software bulletproof, there are still many problems left to be faced:
1. Most people have lots of data on their computers (here, I define a 'lot' as over 10 GB of data). Even if they were only using say 200 mb of data, at today's broadband transfer speeds, that could take 10 minutes to transfer, or much more if they can only get dialup speeds.
2. As I said, most people have lots of stuff on their HD's (I for one always have 80-100GB on my HD). Where are they going to get the space to store 100GB(or more) for every person who is going to use the system? It will cost them a fortune just in the cost of disk space, not to mention bandwidth to transfer the running state of all these systems.
3. It might seem obvious to some, but how are they planning on getting the system into widespread use? If you haven't noticed, people tend to resist change, and even if they do get it into wide use, not everyone will use it, so there will still be computers you cant just walk up to and use.
4. If it costs money to use the service, I guarantee it will take a lot longer to get into widespread use. The only place I can really see it being worth the cost would be in a business setting, where you could sit down at any computer and it would be like you are sitting at your own desk.
In conclusion, good idea, but it needs major work, and there are many major major problems to be solved before it "revolutionizes" computing
Well, with Sun's 'sunray' stuff. YOu carry a smart card, pop it in, do your work. Mid work, pull the card, and the screen goes blank. Pop the card in another computer, and your work is still there.
The future is 10 years ago.
Well, with Xterminals... dummy boxes with small system image, loading a desktop off the central server.
The future is 20 years ago.
Well, with mainframe technology, and 3270 terminals.
Zapman
Can't you already do basically that same thing with GoToMyPC?
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Don't really have to imagine anything Sunrays already do this - just they aren't widely deployed. Is it just my or is it getting boring having people think things don't exist just because Microsoft isn't doing it.
----
If a computer is not my own computer i simply don't trust it.
Ah, but you don't need to trust it in order to use it!
My journal. Mainly about freedom.
The late Isaac Asimov wrote about a single
computer that had acces points in the style of an ATM machine, all around the world. The bad thing is that the computer, tired of that burden, tried to commit siucide hiring some terrorists for the job.
Do not put all your eggs in the same basket...
The Unix Guys at work (e.g., me and my boss) recently sent out a memo to all corporate employees about logging in from public terminals. Because they are outside of company and/or individual control, it isn't possible to know what sort of software is running on them. Concordantly, it's quite possible that any given public terminal has a keylogger, packet-dumper, and any other type of spyware you would care to name.
Note that this memo wasn't just idle paranoia; we sent it out after having some IP address in Korea attempt to log in to our corporate webmail server, after one of our salesdroids checked her mail from a public terminal in the lobby of a business hotel. He had her username, password, and who knows what else in the way of corporate data, all from her using a public PC.
Me? I'll stick with bringing my laptop around, even if it looks funny, just like I stick to using GPG and public-key encryption on my emails.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
... comes around.
... thank you Microsoft, for de-composing computer tech ...
We've had this ability since the birth of computers, we just keep coming up with 'whiz-bang' junk that prevents us from maintaining it, as a feature, across consequent generations of computer technology.
seems like the further we get from the 80's, the more we forget about just how productive things truly were back then
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
It sounds like interesting and worthwhile work, but some of the projected benefits are silly and the projected risks are not discussed at all.
For example: "If a user's computer becomes infected, she could use the Rollback feature to go back to an arbitrary point in time prior to the infection and resume work there, deleting the subsequent work -- and the virus."
There are several reasons why that statement is idiotic.
1) This exact capability has, of course, been available for several years now, first as the commercial product GoBack, then as a built-in feature in Windows XP. (And it has done nothing substantial to solve the virus problem).
2) The breeziness with which the reporter acknowledges that using this capability would "delete the subsequent work" is astonishing. Most of us would not like losing one, two, or several days' work.
3) If you always were aware of the exact moment at which you acquired a virus, viruses would be a relatively small problem. The fact is, you don't know.
4) There's even a nonzero probability that in going back to a time when you did not have the virus that you might also be undoing security patches preventing you from acquiring new viruses.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Am I expected to trust someones computer?
Very easy to put in a keyboard, mouse, USB key sniffer in.
If I can't trust my own computer running the 'standard' OS, how can I trust someone elses.
People have finally gotten to understand they must keep their bank PIN number secret, they should be able to understand putting it into random computers is also a bad idea.
I was thinking about this -- what if they offered a USB "pass-through" key, where the USB device could act as a smart-card (I.e. not have to divulge the secret key for HTTPS-client-cert or SSH2), and the keyboard?
Yes, the screen could still be recorded.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
A pendrive/ipod (in size, harddrive space) bluetooth enabled device that carried core applications and your home folder? Wether in be a unix-style home folder layour, or an xml/generic folder layout that has an abstraction to windows/unix/linux(various conflicting layouts in unixes). and OFCOURSE, the drive, preferably solid-state, would be encrypted with a public key...
I walk up to an unused machine, sit down, the login script/screen detects my bluetooth device, notices that is a user account storage device, and prompts for a username/password that is checked against the device via encrypted bluetooth... If successful, links, shortcuts, small apps(putty), documents, contacts, email, etc.. are all 'loaded' onto the local machine, as if i were at my home computer...
Even better if these were on a linux/x11 setup so we could do some automatic screen attach/detach scripts on all processes/programs running!
There are some issues involved with this.
1. Where are the applications and data really going to be stored?
2. Who has access to this information/hardware?
3. Can I trust that a terminal doesn't have a keylogger (hardware/software) attached to it?
4. How traceable will this be if somebody gains access to my "environment" without my permission.
Fifteen years ago, I was one of the Thin Client evangelists trying to keep M$ Win off of the company desktops.
Thin Client has its place, but so does public transportation... and some people, no matter what, want to "drive their own."
Like the "underwear" quote below, people won't move from virtual computer to virtual computer any more than they move from cell phone to cell phone ( or toothbrush to toothbrush).
Sure, there are limited cases as noted in many of the other posts, but those are limited, and selective. Its one thing for someone to set up several of their own PCs and sync work from one to another. Its totally another to sell people on the idea of using "public PCs" the way people used to use public phones. The minute they had a better option than a public phone (cell phones) people dove all over it. Public phones are pretty useless mostly because of our American fierce sense of individuality. We want our individual form of transportation, our own individual tool for communication and our own individual PCs. Heck look at how few Windows CE/terminal server units are out there. Are there any at my company? none! why? technology not mature enough, cost effective enough? The biggest problem was trying to get people to let go of their "personal Computers" and exchange them for a terminal (never mind how personalized that terminal was).
And it's called the iPod.
... without disrupting the current Mac configuration whatsoever except for the needed reboot. Emulation layer suggested _is_ being worked on... :)
It's tiny standardized robust plugable hard-disk (Firewire based) and 5G is all that I need to "keep running". That's enough space to have the core OS [X] and my Applications directory tree (which is absolutely loaded with only ~3G used).
I'm able to listen to my music anywhere -- and boot "my computer" on any Mac I encounter
Now let me explain.
I want to carry a small device(possibly like an iPod, I can listen to my music on it, but it is primarily a portable HD)
I walk up to ANY computer and insert the device. I press a button. The computer loads MY OS setup, and shows my files and settings.
I use the computer as I need to, press a button, and it ejects my device.
To make this work, it would require a new kind of hardware setups. The Hardware would have to have a basic OS setup, and an abstraction layer for hardware. for network settings, various video cards etc. It would then at the press of the button, setup an interface layer with the OS on the device, and boot that OS. It would give full hardware access to all local hardware(cd-roms, usb firewire ports, 3D cards etc.
Apple are you listening? Your the only one who could pull it off.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I use a mix of macs and a few different kinds of PCs, so to share files betwixt them, I already carry both my filesystem and my OS with me. I have a 128 Megabyte USB flash drive and two knoppix discs (one for Apple Boxxen, the other for IBM and similar). This allows me to open my files and settings on almost any computer I come across, even library card catalog kiosks with IDE CD drives. The whole package is less than 100 grammes. If I had a 1 or 2 gigabyte bootable USB flash drive, I could even eliminate the discs. _ Of course, this system requires me to restart the computer to set the boot options, but it nonetheless helps me share files between mac and PC. I suppose that with the system suggested above, I could boot off of the 'Net, making the total load zero. It's an interesting idea. Meanwhile, I use my knoppix discs for cross-platform sharing.
10 Bits= $.25
100 Bits= $.50
110 Bits= $.75
1000 Bits= 1 byte
For this to be possible, all hardware has to reach the same capability and innovation has to basically halt forever. The desktop environment that I run at home is very personal and consists of both hardware and software. Even assuming everyone had 3 screens and the same keyboard and mouse type as the ones that I use, the bandwidth isn't available to make the applications and data reasonably portable. If you went the approach of just running them all remotely, you would not meet the response requirements for the system to feel right. If you ran everything locally, every machine out there would need a minimum of a 1GB RAM, a high end processor, and high end video cards + you'd need the communications bandwidth to download GBs of data quickly. Either way you're hosed.
Also, high speed internet is by no means ubiquitous at this point. I live in the eastern US, have only modem access, and there is no promise of that changing at any time soon. And don't say satellite is an option. Its more a joke for various reasons including 400K isn't exactly high speed anymore, you can't really use that for any decent length of time without being throttled, and you can forget running applications remotely or accessing data through a VPN due to latency issues. Anybody visiting me and depending on this system would be out of luck.
A far better approach is to carry all of the personalization data and have an automatic system for invisibly backing up to multiple secure sites whenever you're "plugged in". Also, a new portable interface paradigm should be developed so that we carry our "screens", "keyboards", and "mice" with us. I envision glasses, contacts, or implants for visualization and the use of cameras, sound and other input mediums to provide data. The trusty old keyboard interface can be faked using a combination of overlaying some space near you with a virtual keyboard and using video analysis to read the keystrokes. More advanced and natural interfaces could also be developed by overlaying and merging virtual reality with the real world around us.
Didn't MIT do this in the 70s and 80s? Project Athena. NFS, kerberos, etc. Looks like they're still doing it; info here.
Furthermore, isn't this what 'Active Directory' is supposed to be for? Project Athena always sounded interesting, with a lot of neat stuff behind it, but the idea isn't appealing on a scale much larger than an office park or college campus.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
This might be EXTREMELY useful for corporate LAN/WAN's. Althought just switching to something like the Linux Terminal Server Project might provide almost all of the same functionality...
. as p?T1=132+0390
To get the desired functionality at any machine (even Macs?) those machines would already have to be running the client software. So it would not be ANY computer.
Not to mention security. All it would take would be to add a keystroke logger to the machine and you've captured someone's username/password.
http://www.cyberguys.com/templates/searchdetail
Public terminals are about as trustworthy as public underwear.
I actually had the idea while working with special USB encryption devices.
Would it be an interesting and novel concept to have a key that allows you to plug it into a pub terminal (with appropriate package) that allows you to have your user profile and preferences on it?
IE you could buy USB device/key, set up your desktop environment on it, and then be able to carry it around with you from terminal to terminal. Perhaps keeping the general windows user structure on the key (IE my documents/mypictures folders).
This way you could keep files and such, and if the password you entered in the login screen was also the password which opened the key, you could keep it secure as well.
When you downloaded you could only download to your KEY or a temp folder on the hard drive which would be immediately deleted after you logged off.
If the keys had sufficient on-board memory, say 256 megs, you could get a goodly amount of documents/cookies/cached images on it etc...
People could also buy bigger keys just for this purpose.
I think it would be a great idea.
I also have a few other ideas with portable keys, but this one seems kind of obvious to me.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
I mean, even with the SunRay, it's like, whoo-hoo, we combined VNC and H.263 and you should jump for friggin' joy.
You can already do it with rdesktop and windows, vnc and any vnc-enabled graphical environment, even X11 if you have the right kind of proxy extension enabled. I'm just waiting for someone to polish up a client for the SunRay protocol (it's mostly understood, but no one seems to care enough for someone to finish a client...)
I don't think anyone really wants this.
I think a visual protocol is too specific. The work needs to be in creating a widget/RPC API that lets you splat a standardized local GUI onto remote application servers. XML-RPC might be a part of it, or maybe just a component. Something that lets you pick your "skin" and standardizes on a backend with an interface description language... like XUL or Glade or something, but remote.
Then it'd be real easy to have a consistent view of the state of the app from anywhere.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
A universal, single connector including video, keyboard, mouse and network.
An iPod-size device that has one such connector. The device has a processor and a disk, which contains your favourite OS.
And you just plug your device at any connector that you find.
That's what I often carry instead of a laptop.
It's just as simple as that: mounting my drive into a random OS installation would give me a huge fit of paranoia every time I'd have to do that. Plus, I have a perfect control of which OS version is on my CD.
The only drawback is, you can't put a Windows installation on a live CD, so I still have to bring a laptop if I need Windows.
People love to hate the laptop. It's huge, heavy, a pain to travel with, and here to stay.
There are lots of reasons this concept wont work. Security, compatibility, terminal and bandwidth availability are all issues with this approach. Each year laptops get significantly lighter, faster, cheaper and more popular. I heard a statistic recently that it's that soon (possibly happened already) more computers purchased will be laptops than desktops. The price premium for a laptop vs. other options is becoming smaller and as their capabilities expand, much easier to justify.
To illustrate this, my in-laws house is a very old farmhouse. Their is no computer, no keyboards or monitors, no internet connection and barely any electrical system however just a few days ago I was playing lan games with my nieces and nephews there. I have 2 laptops with wireless cards built in and using them I can have a 2 computer office/gaming environment with networking that fits in one bag I can sling over my shoulder. This is awesome, not "laughable".
I can do software development, work on presentations, compose messages all without any infrastructure at all. I can work or play in a field, on a train, in an car, on a bus, or in an airplane half way across the pacific. That's the power of the modern laptop and no web-based app can come close to that. Think about what infrastructure would be needed to make all those places have access to this service and how many companies would have to be involved and taking a cut. Bus companies, car manufacturers, airlines, satellite internet providers, cellular data networks, not to mention farmers with fields. The massive effort it would take to even come close to the capabilities of a laptop is mind-boggling.
There will always be a place for web-based applications and a place for non-web based applications. This concept will probably be appropriate for some content creation and collaboration purposes but I think it's utility is small and the idea of carrying a laptop won't be laughable any decade soon.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
So you have logged in, why can't the computer copy all your files or hijack the session while you're using it?
Looking at all the posts about Sun Rays, VNC over SSH, remote X, and "what if someone hijacks your session", I am absolutely amazed at how many people here seem to completely misunderstand this concept.
1. Sun's Sun Ray is a glorified terminal. All processing takes place on the server, and the resources of the terminal itself are almost non-existant. From Sun's website "Compact, fanless plug-and-work device that processes input and output and manages communication with the shared Sun Ray server." These might be nice if the price stated about $99, not $359. And if I could run the server end on a Linux box (cluster), not some ungodly expensive Solaris behemoth. [Okat, the SunFire v210 isn't expensive, but who the hell wants a 1 GHz UltraSpark IIIi cu to run stuff like this?]
2. VNC over SSH/Remote X. Same issues as the Sun Ray -- not using local resources. You're running everything on a remote server. NOT what the article is describing at all.
3. Hijacking a session, security, etc. Yes, a concern, but it is a totally separate issue. How about keeping a super check, super small USB key with you that has a personal certificate. Then, encrypt all communication between your location and the main servers using that? There are plenty of solutions to this problem.
What this article is talking about using local resources (CPU, sound, 3D acceleration, etc.) to do the task but combine it with a distributed file system. Use the "local" hard drive as a file system CACHE, to speed things up.
Use the "local" CPU and RAM to run programs, not some server on the other side of the world. This way you can run DISCONNECTED or not consume mega networking resources.
Think "IMAP in disconnected mode" or "web browsing while offline".
Sun (and Oracle, IIRC) both eschew this "three tier" client server system in favor of true terminal server sessions. However, terminal sessions, including things like VNC, are too limited when it comes to tasks like 3D display.
By combining the best of terminals (state saved computing) with the power and responsiveness of local resources (think "desktop PC"), they have a lot of potential.
They also have some major hurdles to overcome. Complete hardware abstraction is one. Differences in hardware capabilities, etc. are not trivial problems. (Go from 1280x1024 w/5.1 surround to a 800x600 screen w/o speakers and see how it handles it.)
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Project Athena at MIT already did all of this, back in 1983. Digital Equipment Co Ltd (DEC) even took the technology, productized it and told it onto some Universities in the UK. And all with (at the time) state of the art MIPS Unix workstations.
Here's a link with some info about the MIT implementation:
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V119/N19/history_of_ath
It was really cool technology and way ahead of its time. The only reason it didn't take over the world was because of the prohibitive price of RISC workstations back then. Way too expensive for a corporate desktop. Shame really.
Those who don't understand Unix are doomed to reinvent it, poorly!
...a project that may one day let your work jump from computer to computer without interruption...
Before this can happen we need several prerequisites. The first is standard, open and ubiquitous file formats. If I have a document then it needs to be editable and viewable on every system I happen to use.
But that's not good enough! Let's say I have an OpenOffice sxw document. While it is an open format, it is not a ubiquitous standard. I cannot be assured that OpenOffice will be installed on any given system.
But wait, there's more! A standard format means that more than one application can use the file, but it still means the possibility of multiple applications. Those applications are going to be different from each other (duh!) just like a Ford Taurus is different from a Toyota Prius. The interfaces are going to be different, causing considerable annoyance. And there's not much you can do to change it. Even the Ford Taurus and Toyotal Prius have different interfaces. They do! Ever borrow a friends car, have it start raining, and then have to fumble around trying to find the windshield wipers? Even worse, it might be a stick shift and you're used to manual! Software is many magnitudes more complex than automobiles, so why should we expect the interfaces to be simpler?
There are solutions to these problems, of course. But those solutions will have problems of their own. My point is that this vision of the future is just that, a vision. It might never come to pass despite having the technology to bring it about. We have the technology for personal helicopters, yet where are they?
I think that this vision points to a possibility, but in reality we're going to get something different. No one knows if it's going to be slightly different or greatly different, only that it will be different.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
This is the idea behind FirstClass (from the artist formerly known as Softarc, then Centrinity, now the FirstClass division of OpenText). Longtime Mac users, Scandinavians, or alumni of certain universities may recognize what I'm talking about.
FirstClass is a multiplatform client-server setup that incorporates intra- and internet servers (WWW, email, etc.), groupware (conferencing, calendaring, shared resources, file and contact management, etc.), instant messaging, and the best unified messaging I've ever seen. It's like a more capable version of MS or Novell groupware, plus unified messaging, but way more manageable and scalable (think 100 000 users on an NT4 box administered by one part-time administrator, just for one example).
Why it's not better known is quite beyond me. Don't take my word for it, though; download the free trial and check it out for yourself. It's not time-limited or anything, it's not crippleware - it's a full-function server. The only limitation is licenses (you get five user licenses, any more have to be purchased).
And no, I don't work for them. I don't even stand to gain financially from increased business. I just think, based on what I've seen, that it's a great product. Cheers!
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.