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Slate Speculates on Internet Operating Systems
Slate features a discussion of possible internet operating systems, a Google OS foremost among the potential contenders. The author views the fledgling YouOS as a proof-of-concept that an Internet OS is feasible. He dismisses the idea of a Google-built thin client, arguing that Google would rather build a service available from any Internet-capable device. Google's already-fast service would theoretically translate easily to other web-based applications. From the article: Dollar for dollar, network-based computers are faster. Unless you're playing Grand Theft Auto or watching HDTV, your network isn't the slowest part of your setup. It's the consumer-grade Pentium and disk drive on your Dell, and the wimpy home data bus that connects them. Home computers are marketed with slogans like "Ultimate Performance," but the truth is they're engineered to run cool, quiet, and slow compared to commercial servers. The author compares Eric Schmidt's denials of a Google OS to Steve Jobs's denials of a video iPod. However, he notes that potential obstacles to a Google OS adoption include: the desire to own things; the requirement for fast, flawless networks; and, the trust-deficit when putting personal information on web-based applications.
This is utter crap. It sounds like Google planted hype to try to push the idea of "software as a service", Which is a stupid, unworkable and untrustworthy way of computing.
So the guys at Slate thinks that the combined computing power of Google's umpteen million users is less than the power of their server farm? Unlikely, even for Google's impressive data centers. If its the case that as a general rule commercial servers were more powerful than the sum of their users' machines, we could do away with all those supposedly obsolete distributed computing efforts.
Home PCs are far more powerful than the average user needs. This has been the case for a long, long time. Even Microsoft is having trouble saturating medium end computers that dell sells for the $900US mark. 2.5ghz with 1gb RAM, and you're trying to tell me that my broadband link can deliver application with faster response? I think not. And I like the way they FUDify the "cool n quiet" marketing campaign as well, utterly misdirecting its purpose.
I'm getting really sick of this "software as a service" crud, but at the same time, I'm also getting scared that companies might actually convince the mainsteam to use it. It would spell the end of privacy and anonymity for users and massively increase the power of already too powerful corporations and governments. "Software as a service" is the ultimate spyware. Today we complain that Sony puts rootkits on their CDs, yet there's no real complaint that our entire OS can not only report to base, but runs from there entirely. Forget keyloggers, this thing will record your keys, mouseclicks and input from webcams, scanners and microphones in realtime.
I sincerely hope that the tool that is the personal computer doesn't get taken away from the masses and replaced with drone terminals that could only be used in the way proscribed by our corporate rulers, and observed by their minions in dark rooms.
Oh yea, feel free to call me a tinfoil hat wearing Google hater, because I am.
I hate printers.
YouOS is just sounds like a rip off of eyeOS.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Am I the only one who doesn't understand what an Internet OS is supposed to be? I mean, you've got to have an OS to connect to the Internet in the first place...
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
I want one of those? Where are they?
factor 966971: 966971
I think a lot of people don't trust the internet enough to put their entire computing lives on somebody else's server. People like knowing, even if they don't understand the technology, their files are in that box somewhere. It's a privacy issue to. I still know a lot of people who won't use Gmail because they don't trust Google to read their messages. And what about copyright issues?
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
The only thing that I would like in this genre is if Google provided an official file storage service. I have my important stuff backed up on GMail, but the front end is a bit lacking.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
An internet operating system may be possible... but do we need it? The last thing I want is "503: Service Unavailable" when trying to print a document for a deadline. They may well have backups, but what use is that when I need it *now*.
An internet linked desktop environment has all the advantages of the internet - updates, blogging, social stuff - with the advantages of a more traditional system - you actually have your documents stored locally, you're not subject to some company suddenly suspending your service and deleting your account (WGA is another matter...), and things load up quickly and run fast.
internet os, google.
Did you say google?
Woooooooo I am getting aroused...
Even Microsoft is having trouble saturating medium end computers that dell sells for the $900US mark.
Despite the fact that they haven't released a new OS in 5 years, they aren't doing too badly in terms of saturating computing power. They preempted the market, so they actually aren't lagging behind as much as you would expect.
Don't worry though, with the impending Vista release all your available system resources will be put to use for many years to come.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
YouOS
:P
Too Many Users Online
I just experienced a good reason why it won't work
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
This seems like a mix between Technogenesis and Snow Crash but still in 2D... oh.. and less swordfights.
You have some good points regarding privacy of data, but I disagree that "software as service is crud." There are a number of pro's to software as a service, here are a few:
1) No need to install, low end user maintenance. This is important for businesses.
2) Access to applications and your own data whether at your own PC, in the library or at the airport across the country, without carrying around a laptop.
3) Increased ability for software to offer interaction with other services.
What's happening is exactly the same process which made factories economically viable during the industrial revolution... That, is the bandwidth of the transport system. We're at the point where it's far far cheaper to have the computing in a BFO data centre and decent bandwidth to the home.
How many weavers, potters, carpenters do you know? Well, today's equivalents are programmers, system administrators etc.
Things like VNC just make it easy.
Deleted
Alright, so thin clients are nothing new. Let the server do the work. Save money on the desktop.
Across my infrastructure, which typically has a gig fibre backbone, and 100mb at the desktop, this isn't a mean feat. Hell, I've got it running across the wireless as well.
But to run this across the internet? Gimmie a break. To support my 450+ machines, I would need a rather serious pipe. Which will have a serious cost attached.
Maybe there is a market for home users doing this, but the scalability is going to kill large scale adoption. And since people use (I generalise here, true) Microsoft at work, are they going to learn a new OS at home? Considering the market penetration of the other free OS', I doubt it.
Apologies for sounding negative, but I don't think we'll see this for a while yet.
the bottleneck anymore. It's the slow ass hard drives.
From Wikipedia:
An operating system is a software program that manages the hardware and software resources of a computer. The OS performs basic tasks, such as controlling and allocating memory, prioritizing the processing of instructions, controlling input and output devices, facilitating networking, and managing files.
This is a bunch of web based applications with a slick interface and some persistant storage.
But the network is the slowest part of home computing. The data bus is orders of magnitude faster than the internet connection (or even intranet connection) in nearly every circumstance. This doesn't make thin clients a bad idea necessarily—there are substantial advantages to having the equivalent of a system admin in every home—but performance isn't one of them.
And how long would an OS from Google take to get out of Beta? I don't think I'm gonna live that long.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
"your network isn't the slowest part of your setup"
What a load of crap, my network connection is by far the slowest part of my PC. I've got a 3ghz machine with 1GB ram... but Charter (and most other ISP's) can't pump out better than mediocre network performance. I can transfer 1-3 mb/s on my home network, but I've never gotten better than 300 kb/s over the internet.
RDP is hardly the only way to do remote access, and it's true that most Windows-functional solutions (WebEx, PCAnywhere, ThinAnywhere, VNC, etc.) stink, from at least a performance standpoint.
But those aren't really thin clients; they're really remote access sessions to a thick client running over a network.
A real thin-client package does the computing locally, as well as the display. It just uses storage and some heavy features on the back-end.
python>>> q="'";s='q="%c";s=%c%s%c;print s%%(q,q,s,q)';print s%(q,q,s,q)
What are they smoking? Most people run what, 1.5 to 4mbit connections? Even the slowest hard drives on Dells should be able to manage 25mbytes a second, on the slowest part of the drive. That's like 200mbit internet.
I blame geof's speakers.
1) The thing slowing down the PC isn't the local hardware.
2) The network pipe has to be well in excess of a gigabit per second to be faster than the hardware.
3) The author has NO clue about what he's really on about.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
It's Citrix for the masses. Big whoop.
"your network isn't the slowest part of your setup. It's the consumer-grade Pentium and disk drive on your Dell, and the wimpy home data bus that connects them"
Speak for yourself, mister.
My Verizon DSL 768 Kbps/128Kbps service is a lot slower than my mighty 2.5" 5400 RPM Seagate ST9100823A (sustained transfer rate 38 MB/sec). Approximately fifty times slower "reading" (downloading), 300 times slower "writing" (uploading). No, wait... the DSL speed is in bits, the disk speed is in bytes. Make that 400 times slower "reading" and 2400 times slower "writing."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Heck if it was practical, I'd want google to be software running on my computer and I'd want the entire up to date content of Internet cached locally on my computer.
Networks are great for communication, but communication will come to a halt from time to time which could excacerbate a crisis or cause one. The risk of being without critical information just when you need it most is a considerable risk, but the risk of everyone being without critical information at the same time is an even greater risk.
Put something that boots fast like Damn Small Linus on a USB key, and do web-restores and internet-apps and voila you have a practical portable OS.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The author is wrong. YouOS is not an “Internet operating system”, it the functional equivlent of Windows prior to NT: an environment which runs on your existing platform. The client still does the heavy lifting and it will never be portable enough to run on anything with a “keyboard and a screen.” If Google were to go this route, they would provide VNC-like access to big iron on their end.
Join Tor today!
I imagine an OS on the local machine that's just capable of running Firefox. You boot up the machine and all you see is a full-screen browser. Firefox is written on a platform which runs XUL applications. They're XML + JavaScript that allow for "rich" interfaces. These XUL apps can be served up over the internet to run inside your browser application. They can be mult-windowed and themed just like any other application.
Developers: We can use your help.
... your network isn't the slowest part of your setup. It's the consumer-grade Pentium and disk drive on your Dell, and the wimpy home data bus that connects them.
Erm, what? Sure that could be the "slowest part", relatively speaking, but if you move the functionality of your "wimpy" IDE/SATA bus to the incomparably slower home network connection, then yeah, the network will be the slowest part.
sic transit gloria mundi
This is completely feasible and it could bring computers and the internet to anyone with a high speed hookup. Unfortunately, most of the people with high speed connections already have computers... and the internet.
Haiku for you!
WTF are you talking about? XP came years later than the maturation of the fringe's modern-kernel GUI OS (linux), six months later than Apple's attempt at a mainstream modern-kernel OS, and the market was clearly ready for what XP repreented years before that, as all the constant talk of the "Blue Screen of Death" showed quite nicely.
Or are you trying to say that the function of an operating system is to saturate system resources?
>your network isn't the slowest part of your setup.
The only things on my computer slower than my DSL line are the legacy serial and parallel ports. To match the PCI bus I'd need an OC-24.
>Home computers are marketed with slogans like "Ultimate Performance," but the truth is they're engineered to run cool, quiet, and slow compared to commercial servers.
Last I heard, the Googleplex was running on dirt-cheap commodity boxes, with IDE drives even. A GoogleOS probably won't be running on heavy Sun iron.
"Unless you're playing Grand Theft Auto or watching HDTV"
Yeah, who does that these days? Grand Theft Whosit? Destroy all home computers!
The movement to centralized computing for the masses must be fought to the death.
Centralized Computing is slavery.
You will have take my PC from me from my cold dead hands.
OK, a couple gigabytes of email storage is probably OK (for now). But I've got maybe 500 GB of other data here... I don't know who would offer to store that for free. And even if they did, it would take me, what, 385 days to upload it at 15 Kbytes/sec?
And I'd still want to back it up in case the company holding my data went out of business. Well, OK, Google will probably still be around in 10 years, but YouOS? Right.
I just don't understand the logic.
Pffffft, yeah, right.
Until the big telcos are going to make good on their 6 year old promise of 45+ M/bit sync fiber connection; this idea won't even get off the ground. The thin client idea may be good for some, but not all people. I prefer running server grade hardware, not the consumer grade POS stuff you can buy at Frys. I want my power and files at home, not someone else's server.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
But this is one of the fundamental problems, people don't understand what an operating system actually is.
There have been many debates between geeks about what an operating system actually is, and obviously people writing about these "Internet" operating systems, and the ones creating them, don't have a clue as to what they truly are.
An operating system isn't just a file manager, its a layer of software that allows you to interface with hardware, manage data, and control devices. By its very definition, and "Internet" based OS cannot exist, as it requires SOME form of operating system in order to run. You NEED an OS first in order to access the Internet and manage the network protocols and access network hardware. You NEED an OS first in order to run the web browser to access the Internet. you need an OS first in order to access the application data stored on disk and loaded in memory before you can even launch an "Internet" OS.
Instead, what these people are actually creating is just an online file manager, A SHELL.
Sorry, I just can't tolerate a blatant misrepresentation of terminology in this case. When people start talking about a Google OS as an online service, it is just irritating that there is so much ignorance, especially coming from a supposedly technologically literate community.
I am not saying the concept of an online SHELL isn't valid. Having the ability to create and store and share files online, without worrying about losing data locally if your local hardware fails is a sound idea and I welcome it. Just don't confuse a glorified AJAX P2P front end as being an operating system.
Even in the case if we move to a purely online services based market where you use a thin client to access the internet, you still need an OS before you can access the internet.
Call it what it is, and Online File Manager. An AJAX based P2P front end. An online portal. Just stop calling it an operating system, its not and never CAN be.
It is also a brilliantly f*cking stupid idea to have an embedded web browser within a web environment? I mean, I need a browser to access this service, duh? What makes an AJAX based web browser better then one running natively on your system?
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
This has the potential to provide Google, or whoever the vendor is, with the ultimate in software lock-in - no app will be able to access the remotely stored data unless they say so. While I trust Google to be slightly more open than most of the others who might potentially launch something like this, their record isn't exactly 100% - still no (official) API for GMail for example...
I don't think it's that people don't trust their stuff being on other people's computers so much. Look at what most people are willing to send through email, for example. I think the larger issue is visibility. With all your files on someone else's computer, they are no longer private.
And people's computers are actually more private than the diary books of old. They hold more private info.
I worked for years as a computer tech back when I was in college. One of the things I'd do if I was bored was to do the Windows equivalent of a "find | grep jpg" on someone else's pc. First time I did it I was looking to free up hard drive space. From there on out, it was so darn entertaining I'd do it as a matter of course. You'd be surprised what the people around you are really like.
When they coined the term "personal computer", I'm betting they didn't know exactly how personal they would wind up being. This is why IMHO the remote OS thing will never work. Nobody wants the world to know these kinds of details about themselves.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Ahh, the annual discussion of Thin Clients again. Every year some company gets a hare-brained scheme to reintroduce some variation of thin clients. You can almost set your watch by it. The average buyer can pick up a barebones XP machine for a couple hundred bucks at their local big box electronics store. Who is demanding "Internet Operating Systems"? What's the draw? What can they do that a PC running a web browser can't?
WTF do Grand Theft Auto and Network usage have to do with ANYTHING? Oh, he must mean GTA2's LAN play. Of course!
for shame, letting that article pass through two sets of "editorial staff" (OMG TEH WEBZINE EDITORZZZ!)
The Google Browser
GooOS, the Google Operating System
The Google Cube & GooOS
How to Download YouTube Videos
Authors like this fail to appreciate the actual nature of an OS, the Internet, and hardware. I get the impression from reading pablum like this that people see the web browser as some fundamental new technology, above the scope of desktop apps, simply because they use the Internet. Your average user wouldn't know that essentially any app could be written to use the Internet to transfer data, or that the Internet is simply a mindless mechanism for moving data. It's this tunnel vision of "the browser as the Internet" that has really limited development of better Internet technologies. Things like Flash or Java apps can run on their own, but they're always embedded in a browser, leading people to assume the primacy of the browser. I was really kind of surprised over the years to see that Java apps never caught on, while browsers, nonstandard and programmatically inelegant, became the norm. Maybe the new WPF model will garner a bigger following. It'd be nice to have a sane programming model instead of the freakish raft of Javascript/PHP/ASP/CSS/DOM hacks I currently have to deal with, and I know, I know... Microsoft is evil, monopoly, blah blah, but come on! Javascript is too slow to be of any use beyond manipulating the DOM, so you can't write any real programs in it. Even as a display mechanism browsers suck. I can't overlay a div on a video? A dropdown list? It's just sorry.
Operating System == Software that manages the machine's resources like CPU time, memory and storage, and makes them available to applications in a controlled way. At least that's how I learned it.
Maybe I'm getting old... Has the definition of OS changed all of a sudden??? Aren't they rather talking about an Internet-based application suite?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
A web OS is nothing more than a proof of concept that will never gain widespread appeal. First of all, it would be running in a browser, which is already running on top of an os, which is just retarded for lack of a better term. It's analogous to living in a cardboard box that sits inside your house. Google has the right idea. Continue adding services that are tightly integrated, and then bring them all together in a portal which in their case is their search home page.
Similes are like metaphors
Google will still be in business, but what happens to your data when they decide to start ramping up the profit in their GooOS. No one wants to get caught having to pay for their own data again.
FWIW, they have been talking about something like this for the past 10 years. I remember seeing WebOS back in the late 90s when PCs and storage were so expensive. It's a neat idea, but I cannot see it happening anytime soon. There's just no business model.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
Linux is still immature in some areas, particularly printing and wifi support.
Don't forget games (and mp3 players).
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Ahhhhhhhh, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
This reminded me that an ACM Sig at my university made a simple proof-of-concept web OS. I believe it uses JavaScript - and no, I had nothing to do with it, I just think its neat (btw, I couldn't get it to work in my IE, only Firefox - but it may be my settings):
ChimpOS
I could see some potential applications of a web-based OS, personally. I can't see it ever taking over as a replacement for my desktop, but if you wanted to universally deliver a few applications - it might be an attractive way of doing so. VNC however, as a previous poster mentioned, does seem to do the trick just fine when I'm not at home myself.
It's only my opinion, but it seems to me that Google is better off contributing to an OS than producing and marketing one themselves. We already see this in their Summer of Code (contributing to a number of open source projects) and the porting of their applications to run on Linux.
;-)
Why deal with the overhead and responsibility of making your own OS when you can simply devote staff time to improving the Open Source open source projects and operating systems that already exist? Does Google really want to get into certifying drivers for obscure video and wireless cards? Why not create applications and search tools that can run on ANY operating system, while devoting some resources to improving operating systems that compete with Microsoft.
FWIW, that just seems like a better PR (i.e., less evil) move to me.
And they can count me as one of the people who doesn't want to depend on the internet to have access to all of my e-mail, tax documents, and family photos. Internet connections go down, and (in case of some big disaster) would stay down.
Besides, doesn't the NSA see enough of my internet traffic without them perusing all of my files, too?
I say thanks but no thanks to a network OS. I think google may, too.
What about ripping/managing CDs? (library topping 30GB now, wouldn't want to wait for that to finish transferring over my 256k uplink)
Editing home movies? (a single DV tape is what? 60GB?)
Ripping DVDs? (I don't let my daughter play the originals, only burned copies)
Fooling around with GarageBand?
Video chatting with relatives in other states? (might work but why share limited bandwidth with the "OS"?)
There are a lot of other things that people do besides watch HDTV or play Grand Theft Auto that would never work over a typical home broadband connection.
It's always so sad to see these articles about Google's OS coming in the future. Doesn't anyone realize it's already here?
It's what Google's services use to interface with their giant computing and storage cluster, and the thin client is the web browser.
That's their whole business strategy, selling computing services as a commodity that people pay for indirectly with ad-views. Search is just their most successful application because most people use computers primarily to read documents.
The fact that they treat their cluster as a platform is why they have a competitive advantage over many (all?) of their rivals, who just compete one service at a time.
I feel like this post should get modded -1 Obvious, but the fact that these articles keep coming around again and again makes me wonder...
Google isn't a search engine company, it's a commodity computing company that sells processes indirectly.
With the exponential growth in shrinking of the IC chip (cramming ever more transistors into an ever shrinking chip die size) and the growth of nanotech materials, processes that will replace the existing silicon chip transistors with nano transistors made of carbon buckyballs etc, according to Ray kurzweil, in 25 years the PC you can buy for $1000 will be a billion times as powerful as todays machines.
Now, these machines will be the ultimate in parallel computers (multi-core machines) so if a core crashes, it does not bring the machine down. By then, theses machines will probably have descent open source designs (both hardware and software), not to mention, with the growth of nanotech and descent AI (rule based, fuzzy, neural net etc), you will be able to grow your own PC (no more worrying about drm crap, of course, you may have to use the latest in P2P as the government and Disney/Hollywood will probably be spying of everybody).
The point is, in the future, with the exponential growth in technology, you will have more control over what tech you use and if the googles of today and tomorrow want your business, the only way, is for them to, for example offer cheaper and better access to your computing needs, by sating on the expensive edge of product innovation such as a real super AI client, something that the average users PC cant fully run (there are currently two major projects to reverse engineer the human brain, the data from said projects, combined with the existing computer tech and current AI (symbolic, rule-based, fuzzy, genetic algorithms, CYC, etc) would make for some cool applications.
So it seems the only reason for having a networked based OS is, if it works 100% of the time, has tons of cool features, anybody can use it, it require no hardware and software maintenance, and you will probably have to give away the hardware with a cheap subscription model too because the hardware you can buy get cheaper all the time.
Well, he did specify a consumer grade Pentium, not P3 or P4. So, I suppose that's referring to some of the original Pentium dells still in service with Windows 95 on a 4.3 GB 4000RPM ATA33 hard drive, which probably has only around a tenth the sustained R/W speed of current setups. Still vastly faster than network speeds.
On the other hand, you're assuming that the data needs to be moved around in local storage. If everything is kept on the One Universal Server, most of the time you "only" need to match transfer speeds for user I/O: Keyboard/Mouse/Video and the like. You'd want a "network" boot, and enough on-board RAM to store drivers for NIC, Video adapter, Keyboard, and Mouse. (Tablet perverts can go play on a Mac.) Keyboard and mouse is nigh trivial; if you have better than a 14.4 kbps typing speed, I'll give you my lunch money. Video, on the other hand, would modestly want at least 16 bits of color for 768*1024 pixels at a refresh rate of 24 Hz, which Google says is 36 Megabytes per second. Ouch; barely doable within a good home LAN from a local server, but no hope of working over home grade (or most business-grade) "high speed" uplinks. Oh, and I suppose sound would be in order, too, but a 128 kbps channel for that would be a comparative drop in the bucket. You might get a more reasonable value using a compressed video codec... but most will make the end-user video fuzzier, and require more CPU work for the same response time. And with increasing screen sizes and modern color palettes, those are LOW end figures... and ignore the work needed on the Googleplex end of the system.
In the end, there's no hope for the Augean Stables to reclaim its legendary title from the article's author.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Anyway for a single session big iron is almost never as fast as your desktop machine would be. The big iron is good at certain things, like disk IO. It's good at running a shitload of sessions side by side (Back in the '80's when I was in school it was not uncommon for the big ol' IBM mainframe to be running 3000 terminal sessions at once) but any given session that you're running might not be as fast as your PC could deliver. Especially if you're running it over the relatively small pipe that most home users have for their internet connections.
I suspect that this guy has an agenda that he's trying to push. Shame on his editors for letting him.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
FTA: http://www.youos.com/html/static/manifesto.html
"Why develop on YouOS? One Language: All you need to know is javascript. No perl, python, ruby, SQL, C, etc. That's right! You can do server stuff from javascript!"
'server stuff'?
uhh... What kind of server stuff?
This is why Marketing people should not write the segment that is targeting developers. Developers are obviously a lot smarter than the average users you're trying to sell this service too, so it's rather insulting.
I assume they mean: You can use JavaScript to interface with their API's.
whatever
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
desktop.com
For anybody who hasn't used Slax, they give you an option to upload personal data (passworded, of course), making it a very good live CD in that you can travel anywhere and are still able to access your personal data provided there is an internet connection. Perhaps an Internet OS could take a route similar to this?
If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate.
It's probably never going to be a replacement for those of us who do gaming, or photo/video editing etc. But think of how many people you know who basically have a computer for email and IM. Pretty much any PC on market these days is overkill for these people, and it's definitely not worth paying for windows. Anyone can install some flavour of Linux and at least get a browser working, but a lot of the software they want is either unavailable or lacking in its Linux incarnation. So what if all you needed was that working browser.
No "Internet Operating System" will ever be complete, in my opinion, until it contains a web browser.
So I can nest another Internet Operating System in it.
Et cetera...
WebOS is the future ... but not for the reasons listed here. Portability, i.e. being able to access your files and programs from any computer, is nice, but not a killer feature. It's ridiculous to claim that most people's computers are too slow, when in fact they are more than adequate. That's why PC sales stopped seeing such growth after 2000. Most people who could afford a computer had one that could do everything they needed. Hence prices have dropped while computing power has continued to increase.
No, the reason a WebOS (err WebOSses hopefully) will come about is because computing needs have changed. Look at today's teenagers. Most of what they do with a computer is online. If you took their computer, and disconnected it from the internet, it would be practically useless to them.
There are a few exceptions. They still use the computer to transfer pictures from their digital camera to an online service, like Photobucket or Flickr. They still use the computer to transfer music to their iPods. The computer is just an intermediary in these cases, and it's not hard to imagine these things being done without it -- just add WiFi. Then their camera could upload their photos directly to Photobucket, and their iPod could download songs and videos from iTunes and YouTube.
Of course there is the need for office type apps, like word processing and spreadsheets. These things can also be handled online pretty easily. In the future they will be handled online not because it's better, but just because everything else is online. Right now these things listed so far: photo managment, music management, word processing, are small things to most young people. The big things are instant messaging, email, social networking, etc. The big things are online. The small things will follow.
And that's why WebOS will come about. It will not be an OS in the traditional sense. Traditional OSses were about providing the infrastructure for applications to run on a computer. The point of the computer was the applications, but you needed an OS to make the applications possible. Thus the OS had to manage memory allocation, device management, user input/output, etc. The point was still the apps. The apps are online now, and new infrastructure is needed for them. That's where WebOS comes in. That's what WebOS must be. It must provide the infrastructure for applications and allow these applications to interoperate.
Right now if I'm a developer writing a Windows-based application, I don't have to worry about low level machine code for writing bits to disk, but if I'm writing an application for the web, chances are that I have to worry about creating database connections and issuing SQL in some form to read/write data. A WebOS will eliminate the need for this. If I'm writing a Windows app, I don't have to worry about peeking and poking pixels to draw things on the screen. However, if I'm writing a web app, I have to not only know about HTML and JavaScript, but the quirks of how different browsers render different things (CSS box model for example.) A WebOS should eliminate the need for such arcane knowledge.
So this article proposes we'll be using thin clients that are little more than browsers. Perhaps. What is a browser but a code-delivery mechanism? You receive HTML, Javascript, Flash, and even -- God forbid -- ActiveX and Applets.
Now, what are some other code-delivery mechanisms? apt-get immediately comes to mind. How about Java Web Start?
Just because we're receiving code from the internet and running it on our own machines, doesn't mean we're part of an Internet OS.
The closest this to that I've seen is here:
http://redfoot.net/
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
Do you remember that demo, too? I can't remember the URL (it may have simply been http://www.webos.com/ for all I know), but I know that I saved a copy of the system because the javascript behind it was so interesting, if complicated. I do know it was written by one or two guys, the system was slow, but it was a very interesting demo - kinda like a preview of tommorow (which is now today).
Today, with the rise of buzzwords like "AJAX", "Web 2.0", and discussion on browser-based operating systems, I tend to wonder if those guys are still around, what they are doing, and what they think about the "new" stuff coming around today? I wonder if they just stay silent, seeing what is happenning - or if they constantly prattle on about "I did something like that way back in the late 1990's, but nobody cared much"? Or (I would like to hope), are they behind (in some way) any of the "new technologies" we are now seeing emerge?
This is what bothers me about computers in general, and the internet in particular - the whole non-permenance of data. In an ideal world, you would be able to simply point to the site and say "yeah, here is what they did a long time ago", and show the historical basis. The wayback machine helps, but I wonder if it archived that site before it was pulled, and if it did, how complete was the image? Similar examples of this loss abound. Another one /.'ers might be familiar with is that spinning spherical projection "3d monitor" device - which is now a company, but back when it started they had tons of photos of the original prototype (parts everywhere, wires strewn, multimeters and oscilloscopes abounding - looked like your typical "I hacked this together" homebrew page, in a way) - which are nowhere to be found on the current site (I tried emailing them about it, never heard anything back from them).
With a simple click of a mouse - history can be easily obliterated - is this "legacy of willful forgetfulness" what we really want to leave our children and heirs?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Video, on the other hand, would modestly want at least 16 bits of color for 768*1024 pixels at a refresh rate of 24 Hz, which Google says is 36 Megabytes per second. Ouch; barely doable within a good home LAN from a local server, but no hope of working over home grade (or most business-grade) "high speed" uplinks. Oh, and I suppose sound would be in order, too, but a 128 kbps channel for that would be a comparative drop in the bucket. You might get a more reasonable value using a compressed video codec... but most will make the end-user video fuzzier, and require more CPU work for the same response time.
For normal desktop use (like now) it'll compress losslessly without problem, browsers, office software really any sort of UI except video. For video, what do you really need? Well, most people would be happy with a DVD-quality video, which you can get quite cheap with MPEG4 compression. Sure, both people actually watching uncompressed 720p+ video will be screwed but I doubt that matters. They're video editors and got a buttload of horsepower in their local rig. I've used various thin clients, and the bandwidth is never really the issue. The issue is latency. Throw in a little load on my ADSL line and you're looking at 200ms+ response times before you can do anything. That gets very noticable and it *wait* feels *drum fingers* incredibly *twitch in agony* annoying. It doesn't matter than your 2hr background task still takes two hours (or even 30 minutes). The user experience completely sucks. You work around it a little, e.g. I go whole pages up/down instead of scrolling the page like I would on a desktop but it still sucks.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Once again, we have a case of folks touting old technology as the solution to a problem that doesn't really exist.
"Online" Computing or "Time Sharing" simply puts more money in someone else's pockets. True that applications are updated, but one has no choice as to when/what is updated, much like the Windows Update 'express' update models.
Time Sharing, or having everything online, just makes it easier for other people to snooop at your data, and extort you with fees.
Old document created with version 1.x, better pay to have the rights to open it with v1.x. Other people using 2.x, you can pay for that too.
You want a physical digital copy of your data, sure , we can do that too, just pay us and we will burn it on CD for you.
Look where the MSFT et all trends are going. No need for 'storage' or other devices, let use store and share your data, the NSA will have first dibs on it.
Economically inevitable my hindquarters. It is true, if you invested 90% of the home/office PC budget into thin clients you'd have better stuff for less money. The same could be said of spending 90% of what is spent on consumer automobiles in the US to develop mass transit. Do we see incredibly efficient mass transit across America? No. Its not inevitable, because there are hidden costs to the action -- loss of autonomy, "edge cases" which border on hideous ("Sure, you can't play games on your InternetOS, but what family needs to play games?" "Sure, you can't use mass transit unless you live in a city, but who doesn't live in cities?"), incredible transition costs, etc etc etc.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Nobody is going to do any real work on a cell phone. You need a full keyboard and a decent size display. The cost of the display isn't going to magically drop just because the device is connected to the network. Many companies already lease their PC's so there's nothing new there either.
I clicked on the link to http://www.youos.com/, watched as Firefox sat there for about 15 seconds with a blank page... then realized that I had already seen enough.
Personal computers are so overpowered for their common usage that making them silent and energy efficient has become more important than raw computational speed. As for servers, I thought their design motivations placed agility with "super pi" dead last -- even for a render farm.
Yes it is, and probably by a factor of 100 or 1000.
The computer I am writing this on is relatively old and slow, yet the bus between the processor and the RAM has a 6.4Gb/s theoritical throughput. The bus between the video subsystem and RAM approaches 6Gb/s in theory. Though these are theoritical numbers and not acheivable in practice they are still 1000 times faster than the theoritical speed on my internet connection.
The internet is at it's best when the connected machines do as much of the heavy lifting as possible, perferably in firmware.
It won't happen. Firstly, there isn't enough bandwidth for terminals (even basic X terminals) to work (remember how many people are still on dialup, and I can't get faster than my current 1.5Mbit ADSL). Secondly, modern computers are more than adequate for most users' needs (then again, many would get by with a P3 700). Thirdly, in the developed countries, standard PCs are cheap enough to not need these terminals, and in the developing countries, there's not going to be enough bandwidth for it to work at all. I just can't see why people would give up their PC for one.
IMHO, this is by far an the best web OS
trial. It's called "porcupine" by a company
called innoscript.
http://www.innoscript.org/
"Porcupine is a web application server that provides an object oriented framework for developing web applications rapidly".
Check out the on-line demo:
http://www.innoscript.org/content/view/21/2/
Seems like YouOS more like a half-assed attempt at a network-enabled desktop environment. If that's what you want, what's wrong with, say, KDE?
Help us build a better map!
The guy obviously doesn't have the first idea of what he's talking about. Or he hasn't upgraded his disks/processor since the 70's. Either way this article is a waste of time.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
I have the strange retro futures of 1966 in the back of my mind constantly.
The home automation. The robots. The on-demand lifestyle accoutrements. The click of a button gadgetry.
What we need is a computer the size of a cellphone, with a 10 gig flash drive, some flash RAM, a USB port, a 1Ghz CPU, and WiFi/Bluetooth. And we need it for $100. And as ubiquitous as possible.
With all of our technology, we still don't have the mythical "fridge that knows when you're out of milk."
What strikes me as particularly hilarious is that, in this day and age, in 2006, a year in which humanity has access to Fiber to the Home, carbon nanotubes, nearly room-temperature superconductors, iPods, bitTorrents, IPv6 - this list could go on interminably - but again, the hilarity in 2006 that the idea of a magicITX box running a mythTV frontend to your home entertainment center is not only novel, but practically a geek hobbyist venture, instead of being sold out of the box at Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and CostCo.
That WACI boxes, icepick's remote cams, satellite radio, and TomTom GPS mapping systems are still not only so expensive, but viewed as a luxury instead of a necessity.
And if webOSes lead to thinner clients which helps expedite the future, then I'm all for it.
I've seen several proposals for home computing or media centers that would only show a browser. They touted cost savings by eliminating some software or hardware costs. But in practice a commodity general purpose PC, perhaps at the lower end of power, was more cost effective than a custom computer.
I access the internet at public libraries in the US or at cafes abroad. Many only enable access to IE and no other Windows applications or utilities. So they are effectively browser-only computers.
[...]the bandwidth is never really the issue. The issue is latency.
Durn, I keep forgetting latency issues any time I do first pass back-of-the-headers numbers. You're absolutely right. And while bandwidth is getting better relatively quickly, latency is a much harder problem. Again, it might be workable on a good small sized home LAN, but not over the internet.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
There has been quite of buzz and speculation on ulteo.org and #ulteo (freenode.com) about the new OS project "Ulteo" http://www.ulteo.com/ started by Mandrake Linux creator Gaël Duval.
As far as I have understood, Ulteo could be strongly related to Internet, so may be an Internet OS.
I'll check the website often in the coming weeks...
> Home computers are marketed with slogans like "Ultimate Performance,"
> but the truth is they're engineered to run cool, quiet, and slow
> compared to commercial servers.
Will Ferrel as Angry Dad at Dinner Table: I drive a Dodge Stratus, and surf with an Intel Celeron!
Celeron, like accelerate! It's fast...wicked fast!
Bill Hicks, immitating an adman: "Ahhh, today we made arsenic a children's food additive. G'nite, honey!"
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
webos.com is still there and is now known as hyperoffice. It's the same company.
They appear to still be in business and selling their server-based desktop application services. It looks very much like a groupware product now though, and less like a web-based operating system.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
A student organization I am in built something similar to this "webOS" idea. It was called ChimpOS (our organization is called Webmoneys, a SIG of our ACM chapter). Our reasoning behind creating this, apart from the fun academic aspect, was its usuability for distributing specific envirenments to groups that wanted to work together, small companies, traveling businessmen who wanted a constant envirenment with out worrying about remote desktop or remote network login, and students who use have to use lab computers all the time. We have been working out an API for devoping applictions and the idea is that most of this stuff could be done in some other way allready, but people, real END USERS, know how to open a browser, know how to login to a web page, and know how to use a standard desktop interface w/ icons and such. I don't see this whole "webOS" as a total desktop replacement, it just seems like there would be uses for it.
Steal my band's record! Seriously,
That's the thing - I don't think webos.com was the company behind the demo that I remember seeing oh-so-long-ago - from what I remember, that demo (whereever it was hosted) was some kind of slick (for the time) javascript/dhtml/cgi application (it only ran on Netscape Navigator, IIRC) - looked like a Win95 desktop. From what I recall, I seem to remember that it was only developed by one or two guys, and I think they were just doing it as a "hack" or something. I have to dig out the code I saved, to see what it was at the time...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon