Slashdot Mirror
The Home Server Cometh
narramissic writes "Apart from Apple's 'I'm cooler than you' ad campaign, you don't hear much about the Windows versus Mac battle these days. The reason: Today's battle isn't about 'what brand of computer sits on the desk in your spare room, or even what operating system it runs, it's going to be about who gets to dominate the market for home servers that will control your entertainment, television, telephony, and your home automation system,' argues Dan Blacharski in a recent article."
http://files.myopera.com/agony_/sig/linux.png - any questions? :-P
It's clear that Microsoft is winning the war for the home market.
Microsoft has Windows Media Center which, in its Vista iteration will provide support for HDTV recording, CableCard support, and downloadable content (much like iTunes). Then add in Xbox 360 which can do much of the same along with IPTV (just announced), extend Windows Media Center, and also play games. The online part (Xbox Live) is a great addition to all that.
Apple's AppleTV product is kind of lame, and I was rather disappointed in it. It only plays items from iTunes and locks you in further. Doesn't play Divx, doesn't record anything -- it's more of an 'extender' than anything else. And if the sales Linksys shows anything in regards to how well extenders do, we know we can write it off for the die-hard Mac fans.
That said... I love Apple and the way they innovate. Some products are hits (iPhone) and some are misses (AppleTV). Time will tell either way, but Microsoft is definitely gearing up to be the dominant force in the living room.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
> home servers that will control your entertainment,
> television, telephony, and your home automation system
My goodness. This strikes me as being a little out of touch. Most folks I know don't have a home automation system and they use whatever the phone company brings in for their phone lines, with maybe a little Skype. And that's a small maybe.
I think a more interesting battle is to secure and improve communications within and around the current stuff. So while I still have email accounts and mailing lists and such, I use indi to share pictures with my relatives. It's our one spam-free and ad-free comms mechanism...
The Army reading list
[...] you don't hear much about the Windows versus Mac battle these days. [...]
These guys must not read slashdot... wait...
What the consumer wants is full interoperability so that there is competition. I might buy an iPod today and a Zune tomorrow. I want to be able to port my music or video or whatever without being locked into a particular vendor. But the tech companies want to carve the market into multiple walled gardens. Theoretically free market should react and break it up. But free market depends on customers being informed and making rational decisions. In the tech world, a huge majority of the customers are not well informed. So all the fuddged studies like TCO, columnists paid and bought out by money or laptops or praise will continue to confuse the customers. And DRM and patent lawsuits will proliferate. And it will be business as usual.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
TFA is written from a world in which there are two OSes: Windows and Mac. In an ideal world - and I'm fully aware we don't live in an ideal world, but let's move on for now - the rise of the home server would be a boost to Linux, as people finally twigged they were being asked to pay for the same product over and over again when they use Windows, say, and decided to use something else for their home server (which can be more of a "workhorse" than a desktop system, thus circumventing some of the remaining usability issues for desktop Linux).
If Ubuntu have their wits about them, a home server edition of Ubuntu would be their next plan: a single CD which you can drop into an old, spare PC to turn it into a home server without paying the Windows Tax all over again.
Then Sony is well positioned? Or Charter's cable offerings?
For the past few decades, I'd say the trend has been to bring toy/home systems into the business. For example, desktop PCs of the '82 vintage eventually became mission-critical servers and the Linux you played Doom on in '93 eventually became a viable business OS. If this keeps up, will we see Nintendo rack-mounts in the server room in 10 years?
"what in the world do I want a server in my home for?"
Newb User: Pretend I'm happenin' (calls his neighbor)
Average user: Check this out (calls Geek Squad)
Super user: I'll be the hit of the party now! (wastes 3 weeks trying to stream a video to his fashionable 98 box)
IT Guy: But will it run Linux?
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
If home servers are a commodity, they will not be worth the expense of maintaining them, much like PC's right now.
To diagnose problems with a PC, back up user data, reinstall everything, restore user data is still quite a time consuming task. Usually the cost of this task is greater than the worth of a PC.
Will people sign service agreements, such as with HVAC ( heating/AC ) units, or will they die from slow neglect like many PC's. Are people selling their home going to "brag" about the cool server their house comes with, or will they take their server with them when they move?
If the bandwidth to the home ever reaches a critical level, will people even want a server in the home? Would a simple router/switch/local non-hd based cache appliance be all they need?
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I've been hearing the same "the future of computing is home automation" line for at least 15 years. Yeah yeah, the computer's going to turn on the coffee maker in the morning, shut off the back porch light at night and keep tabs on who called during the day.
I call fluff piece. Weren't we supposed to be vacationing on the moon by now?
*fade into the server room, 2017*
... doesn't sound half bad :).
Network Administrator, BOFH, is monitoring the networking from his Nintendo console. The screen gleefully displays the Mii's of all of the network users. LameUser253 tries for the 3rd time to post his personal information on a phishing site despite the warnings.
The Administrator locks onto LameUser253's Mii with the Wii-mote and administers a fierce wacking with the nunchuck.
This
I built my own server in a Coolermaster Stacker case with an 8 channel SATA RAID controller and hot-swappable drive bays.
But then again I'm a geek who does this for a living and wouldn't expect your average home user to do anything even remotely similar.
I think the real truth is the PC manufacturers are scared because the market is saturated and they're trying to come up with new ways to get consumers to buy their shit.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Keep servers out of the home, dammit!
It's kind of interesting that Apple did not get the URLs for either iPhone.com or appletv.com. The iphone link is to some internet phone provider while I can't read the AppleTV site (non-English). The Apple fanboys were all over Microsoft for not getting zune.com. What's the RDF input on why apple doesn't have the new product URLs?
Its not about max number of features. Never was, never will be. iPod is a piece of crap functionality wise when compared to my old Archos device that was several years old before iPod even came to market. Yet today Archos is barely alive while iPod dominates the market (and I have to admit, I own an iPod). The reason is that iPod was not really competing with other mp3 players - it was competing with CD sales via iTunes. It offered a way to BUY music and listen to it and it made it VERY SIMPLE. Now AppleTV wants to do the same with video content. The main competition is NOT your PC, mac or X-Box, it is Cable TV and DVD sales and Tivo. Its the ultimate device allowing people to turn on their tv and watch whatever they want, whenever they want without all the mucking around with the recording and buying DVDs. Of course a computer with up-to-date choice of software will always be more powerful in functionality, but its not a simple to use one-size-fits-all package that will sell. Thats the reality of it all.
I am not a bit fan of Apple, but I must admit this product has some serious potential. The question is - are the people ready for it?
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
First it was the PowerPC vs. Intel "megahertz myth"-that was shattered when Jobs touted the Intel processor as "superior". Then they made fun of Windows (not Linux, oddly) users as a bunch of uber-geeks who do nothing but spreadsheets and corporate stuff and no nothing about computers, while Mac-ies are the mega-intelligent people because they can make an album in iPhoto (one of the most clunky and limited catalog programs I've ever seen by the way), all the while touting they want to break into business, which *gasp* uses BUSINESS software. Finally, they tout them selves as environmentally above the fray, and Greenpeace (algore's best friend by the way) is protesting Apple's use of toxic materials. Yet when we see Job's we're supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy because it's Jobs...gag me!
The author is Dan Blacharski. As in THE Dan Blacharski. Apparently, "He and his wife enjoy spending time restoring his 1888 Victorian home, and spends winters in Bangkok. " (for some reason, mentioned at the bottom of TFA)
/. summary is all you need to know. It's just a short essay about why computer -> TV is the next 'big thing' according to M$ and Apple.
It sounds like a made up name I gave to the cops in Mexico once while looking at a black car.
On Topic, I just read the article (it's less than two pages)... Oddly enough, the
I'm really not so sure. You can't even download DVD quality movies off the internet yet, and with ('unrippable') HDDVD or BluRay being the next big thing, it seems even less likely that a computer will be the center of media. Then there's TV shows, which look better ripped off analog cable into a TiVo (which is cheaper than an Apple TV) than bought and paid for from iTMS.
The future of media has already been decided: TiVo and high-resolution optical, not the Media PC.
Latewire
There is no "home server" market, except for .1% of the population that is geeky enough to need one. Home DVR setup? Rent a Tivo from your cable company. Who rips all their DVDs to a PC to watch on demand? Who needs their own mail relay? Who needs a media server to share pictures with? The media whores that this guy is talking about already have iPods and camera phones, what else do you need?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I have a little test I use for things like, "Is it easy to use.". The test is simple. If my two year old son can do it, and you (as an adult) cannot learn it with very little effort, you are an unteachable idiot, and you are not smart enough to make a reasonable statement on the subject.
Using that criteria, Linux is absolutely simple. My son could use Ubuntu just fine at the age of 1. Now, being his father, I would love to believe that he is the smartest human being to ever be born, but even if that were somehow true, a full grown adult of below average intelligence should STILL be smarter. So, this brings the question... Just how simple does an OS need to be before the ease of use becomes irrelevant. Not to mention, while I have never set my son in front of a Mac, I have set him in front of Windows, and not only did he have a harder time using it, he had a much easier time breaking it.
That being said, as my two year old approaches the age of three, I might have to find a new test of 'easy'. While I do think it is fair to expect non-institutionalized adults to be smarter than a bright 2 year old, I'm not sure the same can be said for expecting them to be as smart as a three year old.
I'm really not so sure. You can't even download DVD quality movies off the internet yet, and with ('unrippable') HDDVD or BluRay being the next big thing, it seems even less likely that a computer will be the center of media. Then there's TV shows, which look better ripped off analog cable into a TiVo (which is cheaper than an Apple TV) than bought and paid for from iTMS.
You've touched about a topic that isn't covered too well in the article. There are a lot of players, here, and Apple and Microsoft may not be the most influential. As I see it, the players are:
The media companies: They'd like to keep selling you upgraded versions of the same things on shiny disks.
The cable and telcos: They'd like to sell you a big fat pipe, and then sell you TV episodes/movies as pay-per-view.
The computer companies: They'd like to sell you a place to put all this media (or at least the interface to it).
The customers: We want it all, we it cheap, and we want it to be easy. We also don't want anything we buy to be locked into something proprietary.
The media companies love DRM and other lock-ins. The consumer hates DRM (or at least would if they had any real choice in the matter). The computer companies are caught in the middle. DRM limits their ability to offer the consumers many of the products they might sell. (As you point out, if you can't get the media into hardware, the hardware's useless). However, DRM also allows them to lock you into using their hardware and software, so they could view DRM as a benefit. (Itunes and Ipods are a good example of this).
I don't where all this will end up. Us geeks might envision a system where we can store everything (TV shows recorded off the air, DVD rips, video downloads, plus similar for all our music), control it from almost anywhere, and then transfer it for viewing on any platform we wish. This doesn't mean that we'll get it.