The End of .Mac and Google Apps?

mattnyc99 writes "In his weekly tech column for Popular Mechanics, Glenn Derene predicts that everyone will have a home server to network their house within 10 years—rendering Apple's .Mac accounts and Google's productivity software useless. As prices for products like HP's MediaSmart Server drop and as processing power becomes more pervasive, Derene says, 'you'll ultimately need a centralized server—that high-powered traffic cop—to coordinate the non-stop exchange of information between your new multitude of devices.'"

Comments

Been there, done that

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called Plan 9 from Bell Labs.

Those who don't understand Plan 9 are doomed to reinvent it, poorly.

Re:Been there, done that

[MouseR]

Correct link

Re:Been there, done that

[MadnessASAP]

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/Plan 9 It's .com not .org. But thanks for pointing that out anyways.

Re:Been there, done that

[Aellus]

I thought Plan 9 was a crazy filesystem... where everything in the system was interfaced as a file?

Re:Been there, done that

[stonecypher]

Nothing on TCP has ever needed a central server. Plan 9 is a solution in search of a problem.

It's called the internet. Those who don't understand it are doomed to reinvent it, badly.

Re:Been there, done that

[ivucica]

It doesn't need it, but it simplifies things and makes it generate less traffic. Is it easier to broadcast over the entire Internet? Or maybe you prefer "peer-to-peer" /ETC/HOSTS over "server-based" DNS? I rest my case.

Brought to you by

[edittard]

Brought to you by the shameless plug for HP dept.

Re:Brought to you by

[Overly Critical Guy]

A server in every home? People want less to deal with, not more. Why have a home server if you can just connect to one online? This is why I laughed when Microsoft introduced its home server edition of Windows, because it's so contrary to current trends.

Re:Brought to you by

[Daniel Phillips]

A server in every home? People want less to deal with, not more. Why have a home server if you can just connect to one online?

One word: privacy. Oh, another word: performance. Most home networks are 100 Mbits/sec while the internet connection is typically less than 1 Mbit/sec, two orders of magnitude less. This relative difference will remain for the forseeable future as home networks move to GigE while broadband speeds slowly increase into the tens of megabits. Think high resolution photos and video files.

Re:Brought to you by

[Sillygates]

most home networks are not even 100Mbit, for the average joe user, who has multiple computers, it is much easier to set up an unsecured wireless network (802.11b/g), neither of these is much faster than 6-12mbits (in any situation I have seen).

I think it would be cool for home servers to become the norm, but there are problems with that too. 1. US ISPs suck. Other developed countries offer 50mbit or even a gigabit to the home, while US isps are generally stuck at some small fraction of a mbit upload. You also have to remember that not having net neutrality will likely make it so that ISPs will try to forece more money out of you to get reasonable service. and 2. many companies are likely to offer the same service (online storage) and are likely to include software to automount these drives on boot/sync local documents, which would seem seem easier to that average joe who does not know the first thing about networking.

Re:Brought to you by

[teh kurisu]

My flatmates and I had a server running in our living room all through uni. At first we used it to share our ADSL connection, which was accessed with a PCI modem that our ISP provided. We used it as a Quake server and a file and ssh server after that, so when we bought a wireless NAT router we kept it around.

In my last year of uni, I was working in a special lab where we were allowed to bring in our own laptops and connect to the university network. This was all by special provision, and we were behind an additional firewall. POP, SMTP and IMAP were all blocked, so were were unable to access email services not only from the internet, but even from elsewhere in the same department. So we set up an email service on our living room server, that would check all our accounts and provide IMAP access when at home, and Horde webmail access when we were in uni.

It wasn't an ideal solution, because Horde was difficult to set up and use, and very slow, mainly because although we had close to 8mb downstream, we were still on 512mb upstream. If this kind of approach is to take off with ordinary users, there needs to be a slot-in solution, and upstream speeds need to come closer into line with downstream. The other issue was power consumption. In these days where we're being told to consume less energy, an always-on machine in the house isn't going to look attractive.

Re:Brought to you by

[Daniel Phillips]

most home networks are not even 100Mbit, for the average joe user, who has multiple computers, it is much easier to set up an unsecured wireless network (802.11b/g), neither of these is much faster than 6-12mbits (in any situation I have seen)

Good point, however 1) 5-10 Mbit/sec wireless is still typically an order of magnitude faster than the "broadband" link and 2) nearly everybody has four or so wired ports on their wireless router. Once home users get into video and high res photos they quickly discover that wireless is just too painful compared to plugging in a physical wire. Now, home users with enough clue and energy to wire their homes properly will be a small minority for some time to come. But even a small minority of computer-enabled homes these days translates into millions. So I predict that the market for easy-to-use home servers will quickly climb into the millions of units. This has already started.

Re:Brought to you by

[Doctor Memory]

In these days where we're being told to consume less energy, an always-on machine in the house isn't going to look attractive. No reason why it couldn't. If you're mostly using it as a storage server and mail gateway, you don't need anything terribly powerful (you can easily saturate four 100Mb ports with a 1Ghz P-III). And if it's a home server, you'll mostly need it when people are home and using it, so it can go to sleep overnight and probably half the day, too.

OTOH, people are probably going to want something with 2-5 TB of storage, so you'll have several large drives, which will probably take a fair amount of power. This could be ameliorated by giving the server 2+G of memory (yeah, I know, more power drain) and using most of it as a write-through disk cache.

Hmmm, now seems like a good time to brush up on distributed file systems...

Re:Brought to you by

[mgv]

most home networks are not even 100Mbit, for the average joe user, who has multiple computers, it is much easier to set up an unsecured wireless network (802.11b/g), neither of these is much faster than 6-12mbits (in any situation I have seen)

Good point, however 1) 5-10 Mbit/sec wireless is still typically an order of magnitude faster than the "broadband" link and 2) nearly everybody has four or so wired ports on their wireless router. Once home users get into video and high res photos they quickly discover that wireless is just too painful compared to plugging in a physical wire. Now, home users with enough clue and energy to wire their homes properly will be a small minority for some time to come. But even a small minority of computer-enabled homes these days translates into millions. So I predict that the market for easy-to-use home servers will quickly climb into the millions of units. This has already started.

I think that a high powered base station is the future. Sort of what lots of vendors are moving towards. Being an apple fan, I'm thinking of an airport extreme. Lots of other vendors do similar products - many of which will be cheaper and with more functions but strangely harder to use :)

The current products will do network storage and print servers. We have seen apple put whole computer systems into similar sized boxes, like the apple tv. So how long before they do a "home server" type device, that can do calendaring? How about a web server? Actually, you can pretty much do this now with a mac mini and OS X server edition - but at a bit of a cost, more effort than the home user wants, and putting osx server on a mini would be a bit of overkill.

The reason I think this is the future is that people just don't want what a typical PC is as a home appliance. Its big, ugly, noisy, and sucks power big time. Its not traditionally been reliable enough to leave on 24/7. And really, its trying to be too many things.

Home servers will happen, and people are already getting them without realising. They call them routers or base stations. The functionality that people want will be added on to them as the hardware manufacturers get better and better.

Certain functions which are internet dependent really don't have much need to move to these boxes. For example, email and instant messaging don't work if you don't have an internet connection. If you do have one, you may as well use a central server.

Web servers sit on the border - you could do them either way.

So its really for LAN type activities that a home server shines - file sharing, printing, music & video streaming.

And we are half way there already.

My 2c worth.

Michael

Re:Brought to you by

[Daniel Phillips]

Very insightful reply. You are right, if we keep sitting around on our fat asses, Apple will do this for us. Or maybe we already do a great job if it, but it will take Apple to add the cool factor. In that case, we penguins can add the "it's free and I own it" factor.

I just need the right brick to run this one on. Did I mention it needs a 3 1/2" sata drive with 500 gig or more? It does. And besides that, the rest of the unit should basically just be a small circuit board with an ethernet jack attached to the side of the drive.

Re:Brought to you by

[Overly Critical Guy]

People don't think about privacy or performance. They think about convenience.

Re:Brought to you by

[Paulrothrock]

And if you're outside of your house you're looking at a connection that's usually less than 512kbps, thanks to woefully asymmetrical broadband speeds. And it's somewhere without a sprinkler system, redundant power supplies and redundant network connections and rolling backups.

Don't get me wrong, I've got a home server, too, but I still have a web host with 250GB of space for backups, email, and my picture gallery.

that's moronic

[lthown]

I have a server at home, with over a TB of storage. I still use most of google's apps, especially Gmail.

Re:that's moronic

[yada21]

That's because they haven't invented Googlepr0n. Yet.

Re:that's moronic

[LiquidCoooled]

Are you sure?

http://images.google.com/

Re:that's moronic

[gvmson]

Same here. I have 3 servers at home, that does not stop me from using both google and .mac

Re:that's moronic

[Professor_UNIX]

I have a server at home, with over a TB of storage. I still use most of google's apps, especially Gmail.

That's probably just because your ISP doesn't let you run servers on your DSL or cable modem. In the future when everyone moves to IPv6 there will be little to no restrictions imposed. Everyone will have a huge block of static addresses to use instead of having to pigeon-hole everything into a dynamic IPv4 address using NAT kludges. In the future Gmail will be irrelevant because your home server will have an e-mail server and web front-end built into it. Many of us already have this setup already, but in the future it will become as normal as someone having a TiVo or Xbox360 on their network. The days of a third-party provider collecting, indexing, and targeting advertisements to you based on the content of your e-mail will be over.

Re:that's moronic

[rucs_hack]

That's because they haven't invented Googlepr0n. Yet.

yes they have, it's called the google homepage...

Re:that's moronic

[DShard]

How do you figure that a change in communication protocol will change ISPs desire to offer tiered service? Blocking web servers has nothing to do with not having enough public IPs and everything to do with competition. The reason your broadband is cheap is the same reason port 80 is blocked.

Re:that's moronic

[marcosdumay]

And will those servers run Dunken Fuken Forever?

There is no reason we can't have that setup now. The only problem is that ISPs don't want it. So, in the future will ISPs be different, have competition, or what?

Re:that's moronic

[senatorpjt]

I run servers on my cable modem, but I still use gmail for the email address I gave my boss, because their servers are more reliable than mine.

Even if people have these servers, they probably won't have redundant power supplies, access to multiple backbones, automatic backup, or uptime guarantees from the ISP.

Re:that's moronic

[dal20402]

And you really think Joe User is going to administer his own email server instead of using Gmail?

Even if Apple were to develop "Mail Server for Idiots" and you could just plop it onto the IPv6 network, it would still require some administration, to set up accounts, deal with over-quota family members, etc. On the client side, either Joe will have to get a domain name or type in an IPv6 address every time he wants to get his mail remotely, rather than typing "gmail.com." All of that takes time and brainpower that most people want to use elsewhere. Furthermore, Joe's home server is a WHOLE LOT more likely to lose his data than Google is, since Joe never wants to take the time to back up.

Most consumers will use home servers to store media libraries. In the IPv6 era a few more may use them for remotely accessible services like email and calendars, but not many. It just takes unnecessary time and effort, especially for someone who just doesn't care about technology.

Re:that's moronic

[nanosquid]

In the future when everyone moves to IPv6 there will be little to no restrictions imposed

That will be right around the time we all get nuclear powered flying cars, right?

The days of a third-party provider collecting, indexing, and targeting advertisements to you based on the content of your e-mail will be over.

How does it feel to be the new, proud owner of the Brooklyn Bridge?

Re:that's moronic

[BorgCopyeditor]

I thought it was called "I'm Feeling Lucky."

Re:that's moronic

[AKAImBatman]

That's probably just because your ISP doesn't let you run servers on your DSL or cable modem

Says who? I run my own home-servers, and even a very popular web app. I used to rely on them for email service, but I transitioned to GMail instead. Why?

Quality of Service

Having dedicated staff ensuring that my email is running smoothly, is upgraded regularly with the latest features, has enough bandwidth and i/o to respond quickly, and is not vulnerable to attack is worth a lot more than the value of running my own email server.

Running my own email server takes a lot of time, effort, and money. To equal the level of service that GMail provides, I would have to spend the majority of time monitoring the service and writing/installing upgrades. Not to mention upgrading my bandwidth and server resources to provide the responsiveness I've come to expect out of GMail. (Sorry, imap on an old FreeBSD box just isn't as fast.) Thus in the end, it's easier and cheaper for me to simply use GMail.

Re:that's moronic

[Corwn of Amber]

In the future, everything will be as broken as it is now. It will still be an horrible amount of work to get the setup just right and that's not even beginning to take security into account.
<br>(The cause is that people who believe it's impossible to build programs with no bugs. That, and economics.)</p>
<p>The only problem.... Why don't you run your http server on port 8080? I've been using DynDNS to acess my FTP during two years. Never had the slightest issue. (Apart from the fact that setting up a simple FTP just to share one folder, on Linux, compared to doing same in Windows, is a major hemorrhoid. No, I don't want to hear about easy Linux solutions. I did it, it sucked, period. Why doesn't it work as simply as everything on OSX? You know, the BSD even an untrained chimp can use. Now compare that to every other BSD : you need classes just to understand their crazy partitioning system.)</p>
(How comes that my Firefox spell checker doesn't know "http"???)

Re:that's moronic

[znu]

I have business-class DSL with a static IP and a ToS agreement that lets me run all the servers I want. I used to have a server on the network and run my own e-mail, web hosting, etc. I don't anymore. Why? Because it's not worth my time. I don't want to have to worry about backups, software updates, spam filtering, DoS attacks... My e-mail is on GMail now, and I've switched my web hosting to MediaTemple. These guys have full-time staff to deal with any issues that arise. They have massive amounts of redundant infrastructure, backup power, and well tested procedures.

I used to think things would head in the direction of personal servers. Now, I think the trend will be in the other direction. More web-based apps, more hosted services. Why? Basically, because it provides huge economies of scale, in terms of both infrastructure and manpower.

Re:that's moronic

[SerpentMage]

You ever looked at this.... http://www.dyndns.com/ and their mail forwarding? I love it, and my email server can up and down whenever it wants without having my services interrupted.

Re:that's moronic

[stevemulligan]

Yea I totally agree. I use gmail for the same reason. The article doesn't mention anything about the end of web based apps though. That was the submitter. Everyone I know already has a server at home.

Re:that's moronic

[AKAImBatman]

I have a premium account with DynDNS. That doesn't change anything I just said.

Re:that's moronic

[aichpvee]

BTW, kind off topic. But is the renaming of "personalized homepage" to "iGoogle" part of that unholy alliance between Google and apple? Because if that's the case, then we might very well not be using Google apps and .mac in ten years, we might just be using iGoogle with a mac-y interface.

I have to go now, I just threw up a little in my mouth.

Re:that's moronic

[pjr.cc]

Personally i think the home server deal is probably going to become quite a reality. Lets face it your average joe with a home pc and an adsl link already has to do some form of management for themselves. If you assume they have other family members also using a shared pc then there's some more work to do there.

But, if some beast did become reality lets look at the reality of the technology its going to be storing mp3's, videos and all kinds of household rubbish. It also has to meanfully integrate with desktop pc's around it and be very simple to manage.

Now your average user can already plonk an adsl modem and a router + wireless on the network (altho, judging by the seriously large number of open wireless networks lying around its clear how little they bother to actually understand them). Now if i were to ask my upstairs neighbour (who has a wireless acces point, a router 2 laptops and desktop) what his ip address is, he wouldnt know what im talking about because his network hardware has a bunch of defaults he didnt need to bother with. Why would a home server be much different?

"oh, im running out of space, i'll have to delete some stuff"... But this is where the technology has to grow, the desktop pc has to be able to integrate easily but securely, the box itself should be easily upgradable for space (without destroying content, etc). Its not here yet but it cant really be that far away either.

Lets face facts, the technology is out there already to easily grow volumes on a running OS. All that needs to happen is for someone to plonk a simple management interface, a manual and easily plugable drives and viola - home server.

Obviously im over-simplifying but the technology isn't that far off for a reasonable home-server that could easily manage to:
- hold a bunch of mp3's
- hold a bunch of video
- record some stuff
- be upgradeable
- integrate easily into an existing pc
- put itself onto a network that already exists
- etc.

Try to find the "hard" part in all that (the correct answer is when things go wrong ;)).

Re:that's moronic

[tm2b]

Yeah. I have a few TB of spinning RAID Infrant NAS boxes here in my home, and I use .Mac all the time. There's no substitute for off-site backup of my business' Quickbooks files (we'd be truly screwed if we lost those), and being able to access both my most critical files and my bookmarks from other computers when I'm on the road is well worth the price of admission

As is very common in amateur technology analysis, this guy is suffering from a huge shortage of imagination in how people really use these services.

Re:that's moronic

[jaweekes]

Why can't they (Google or anyone else) host the web app on the local server, and upload it to the main web site? All the advantage of Web Apps plus it would be local, so always connected and easy to share. Good idea for Google OS? Just a thought...

Re:that's moronic

[Blakey Rat]

I hate to break it to him, but with all the huge bugs it has, and the general slowness of doing ANYthing, .Mac is already mostly useless. Going to totally useless would only involve removing the picture album feature.

Re:that's moronic

[osu-neko]

Yes, precisely. My needs a bit more complicated than a simple email server, but it was still a great benefit for me when I took down my home-run server and instead rented some rackspace in a professional datacenter. I'd never bring that stuff back home. I get *far* better bandwidth, and fewer headaches and greater reliability this way.

Re:that's moronic

[noidentity]

"The days of a third-party provider collecting, indexing, and targeting advertisements to you based on the content of your e-mail will be over."

You do realize that gmail is a free service, right? There are plenty of e-mail providers whom you can pay (your ISP for one) and get no advertisements.

Re:that's moronic

[Knifa]

You are forgetting most mail servers are a bitch to set up.

Re:that's moronic

[Anonymous Coward]

And you really think Joe User is going to administer his own email server instead of using Gmail?

Heard in the 1960's: "And you really think Joe Schmoe is going to administer his own 'personal' computer instead of using the mainframe?"

Re:that's moronic

[dal20402]

If the rich, multimedia Internet content of today had come to maturity a decade or so earlier, Joe Schmoe might never have had a PC. Gmail etc. are not that dissimilar from the mainframe model of computing.

The only reason Joe Schmoe has a PC today is that PCs were already mature by the time the Internet became attractive to mainstream users. If he and lots of other users had a multimedia-capable dumb terminal, their lives would be a lot simpler. (Think "interactive TV and stereo" -- that and word processing is really all many users do with their PCs).

Of course, having said that, there's no way I'd trade my own Macs for dumb terminals...

Re:that's moronic

[tim90402]

The economies of scale you point to were also the argument for mainframes in an earlier time. That got trumped by the economies of a mass market PC. If I can amortize development and production costs over millions of customers, I can deliver a lot more for the dollar. As services become centralized, the equipment will become increasingly specialized and expensive, and the pendulum will swing back to decentralization.

Re:that's moronic

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose in some kind of theoretical hand-wavy way, that's true. Of course, it's not just luck that PCs preceded the internet (for the common person), because without intelligent devices as endpoints, cheap high-speed links never would have been installed in the first place. And it's all a moot point because it didn't happen and we can't go back and change it now.

We have cheap PCs everywhere because they're the logical (if incremental) improvement of hobbyist computers, and that's how these things get started. Hobbyists say "if I put these chips together and plug it into my TV, I can play breakout!". They don't say "let's build a high-speed digital network between a bunch of houses" when they don't have PCs yet.

And none of your supposed drawbacks is impossible to overcome:

it would still require some administration, to set up accounts

This would be easier than signing up for webmail, because you wouldn't need captchas, etc.

deal with over-quota family members, etc.

GMail gives me almost 3 GB of space. I don't think you can buy hard disks this small. You could give everybody 1/n the size of the disk; for 10 people on a 60 GB disk (is that the smallest drive these days?) you'd still get more than twice what GMail gives you, and it's pretty easy to plug in another one when you run out. GMail offers no help here.

On the client side, either Joe will have to get a domain name or type in an IPv6 address every time he wants to get his mail remotely, rather than typing "gmail.com."

Or the domain name could come with the service (e.g., joe.com). Or the company could point a subdomain to his server (e.g., joe.homeservers.com). Or he could simply type the company's domain name, and it would redirect to the appropriate server based on his login name.

All of that takes time and brainpower that most people want to use elsewhere.

Which is why we're talking about a company like Apple making it easy to do, not about Joe Schmoe buying parts, assembling a Linux box, and buying/assembling the services himself!

Furthermore, Joe's home server is a WHOLE LOT more likely to lose his data than Google is, since Joe never wants to take the time to back up.

Again, not hard to overcome. The service could either make automatic encrypted backups to the company's servers, or you could agree to a P2P system to store encrypted pieces on the hard disks of other people who have bought the service.

You've only argued that setting up your own Linux box is harder than GMail. No kidding! But I haven't seen any reason why a company that made it as easy as GMail couldn't be successful.

Re:that's moronic

[Miseph]

Plus flying cars.

Predictions about the future are nothing if not notoriously wrong. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try, because it's never wrong to have an idea where you think things are going or where you want them to go, just keep in mind you'll probably be at least 75% wrong about everything.

Re:that's moronic

[Anonymous Coward]

That's probably just because your ISP doesn't let you run servers on your DSL or cable modem.

I had an ISP that allowed me to run servers and I did run a multitude of servers. But I slowly moved all my services to a hosted model. Why run IMAP, mail, web, databases, version control, etc at home on a un-reliable cable connection on a server that I manage myself that only did daily/weekly/monthly backups and was affected by power outages longer than 15 minutes and meant I had to leave my home machine running? I didn't have anywhere to do a remote backup other than another machine at home.

So I moved all my servers, which were running in Linux anyway, over to a hosted shell account. And now I don't have to work as hard to maintain it. They have the RAID arrays, the hourly/daily/monthly/weekly backups, take care of all the server configuration and updates, etc. Outages are less frequent, and it's ok if I want to turn off my home machine. I do remote backups to my home machine.

I still have SSH to my home machine but I rarely use it.

I see this trend with a bunch of other people I know who used to run servers at home. It's not worth it now that hosting is cheap.

Frankly, I think the article's author is completely wrong. We're in the trend towards hosted services and its only going to become more prevalent.

Re:that's moronic

[umbrellasd]

I think what they are talking about is the point where IT type tasks mature to the point of an appliance. Imagine you go to the store and for $300 you pick up a cube which has an on button, it connects to a network jack or maybe we run LAN through the power cord in 10 years. When you plug it in, it is on the network and available through a "phone number" which is now your IPV6 number with some domain name alias of your choosing. The device is entirely solid state which makes it extremely reliable, it has adequate storage for anything you could reasonably want to put on it. It has power and data redundancy and there's a nationwide service that can have it repaired and back to you in just a couple of days but the failure rates are so low that no one really cares (probably lower than the failure rate on a TV because that is sensitive to a bunch of factors due to the electron gun). So basically, having a presence on the web will be as trivial as having a phone number in the past, and all of those icky tasks related to storing and preserving your digital data will be simplified to the point where you need the IT equivalent of a Maytag Man once in a great while. When things are that simple and you give people a choice, "Do you want all your cool digital stuff upstairs in your study or do you want it out somewhere on some other person's server?" people are going to say, "If it's a no brainer to maintain, I want it close to me because it's my stuff."

There are two major obstacles to that right now. One is the technical aspect of sufficient storage at a cheap cost on hardware that has great reliability at low maintanence cost. That one is in the process of being solved. The other is wanting people to be able to find you on the network. Once everyone has a cube of data like this in house and it's on the web, it's irrelevant where it is because a Google will index and crawl all that stuff at your disgression in an easy to set UI setting. Then the only choice will be, do I want my stuff close to me or far away, and the answer to that question is always simple. People want their stuff close. So that is exactly what will happen.

My main point is that you have to look at where the technology is going and assume that the difficult things of the present will become simpler and simpler in the future, which is how things have always gone. Once there were mainframes and the notion that everyone would have a computer in house was insane because of the huge costs. But now look. That's exactly what we have. What follows is the natural progression of that. I still claim there will be a continuing need for global and centralized indexing services, but the data will become more and more distributed (and redundant) at an astonishing rate. And then you'll have something that looks like a gigantic neural network. Guess what happens next!?

Re:that's moronic

[bigpat]

And you really think Joe User is going to administer his own email server instead of using Gmail? It depends. I don't think your arguments about administration are relevant, because administration could be no more difficult that managing your account now over the web. Really it comes down to cost versus benefit. If the free webmail providers become too annoying (with ads or some other "feature") or too inflexible with rolling out features that people actually want and the ISPs don't go out of their way to block services in order to try to lock-in customers to their offerings, then the "hassle" of turning on a mail server or some other service on your home network becomes worthwhile. Really, if you can configure your own computer for Internet access, then you shouldn't have any problem setting up a basic mail server for a few people or a web server or just about any other type of service.

Re:that's moronic

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

I don't see how the march of progress is going to undo these business models. The big boys have increasing resources too, and they remain beyond those of the home user. I mean, my age in years is steadily increasing, but I'm not about to overtake my older siblings any time soon.

I use servers heavily in my home... for dumb storage, ftp, serving webs, VNC access to apps I don't want to lug around, an Exchange server, a couple streaming media apps, and a smattering of other misc crap. I have over 3TB of storage scattered among them, some of it mirrored. Still, I use Google mail and apps more and more as time goes by. I'm sick of moving account settings and configuration files and extensions and mailboxes and preferences from machine to machine. I don't mind backing up the critical stuff in case of catastrophic failure, but keeping up with all the incidental crap through every normal upgrade cycle is getting way too tedious.

Until hardware, operating systems & software don't need maintenance & replacement, my habits will probably keep moving in the direction they are.

Re:that's moronic

[njh]

Which web based email do you use? I tried squirrelmail, but I found it clunky.

Re:that's moronic

[ScrewMaster]

Yeah, but can you watch your ripped DVDs on your laptop in the backyard while you're grilling burgers on the barbecue? Truth is, "Joe User" is going to be far more concerned with local bandwidth than anything else, and unless you've got a seriously fat pipe to that rackspace job it's not going to be much use for a typical home content server.

Re:that's moronic

[tbuskey]

I used to run my own mailserver. Now I use Google. I no longer have to worry about remote access to my mail. Spam filtering, security and search are done well. I miss having procmail rules a little. My servers at home can forward email to my gmail account very well. I don't have to patch my mail server or tweak the forwarding rules because my server IP is on a blacklist.

My home server does have file, web, TiVo, music and printing on it. I don't share that out on the net and frankly don't want to spend the bandwidth. I don't want (most of) my photos, TiVo shows, CD collection out there for personal, ethical and legal reasons either.

Not having a static IP and dealing with port blocking doesn't prevent running servers. If you know how to modify your firewall it' snot hard.

But email? Good riddance. I have better things to do with my time.

In the long run ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... we're all dead. -John Maynard Keynes

Re:In the long run ...

[Anonymous Coward]

the long run ...

... we're all dead. -John Maynard Keynes

I thought that was Jim Fixx.

Re:In the long run ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Keynes is dead, we are living in the Long Run - Murray Rothbard

Not web based...

[DTemp]

I hope they don't plan on this server having a web-based interface to the outside world, because right now many ISPs (including mine, Comcast) forbid people from running web servers, and most actually block access to port 80 on their customer's lines.

I'm hoping that will change, I hope I can use my internet line for whatever (legal) stuff I want in the future...

I also hope my upload speed becomes as fast as my download speed, instead of the current 768kbps compared to 6.6mbps, but thats another story...

Re:Not web based...

[tomhudson]

su root
vi /etc/apache2.conf
i
listen 8000
listen 8080
:wq
apache2ctl restart

There - fixed it for ya.

now type http://examplehomeserver.com:8000/ or http://examplehomeserver.com:8080/

BTW - The article is wrong - not everyone will be running a home server in 10 years. Most people don't want to be bothered, and won't want to spend the extra $$$ on electricity, etc. Cheaper and easier to just have one family member/friend run a linux/bsd box and offer user accounts with ssh, sftp, and ~usr/public_html access (or symlink /home/user/public_html /htdocs/user for people who can't figure out how to type a tilde.

"You need to type a tilde before your user name in the url."
"A what?"
"A tilde."
"I don't have a tilt key on my keyboard."
"Not tilt - tilde!"
"What's a tilde?"
"That squiggly line thingee."
"Oh, okay." ... pause ... I can't find it.
"The one next to the one."
"The one next to which key?"
"The one."
"I've got over a hundred keys ... which one?"
"The one."
"... yeah, sure ... quit pulling my leg - there's really no such thing as a tilt key, is there? This is a joke, like the "any" key."
(- click - account deleted)

Re:Not web based...

[LiquidCoooled]

You sound like you go through something similar.
I have to guide people through typing a colon key every couple of days and 99% don't know what I mean.

"OK, in the host name box, type our domain name followed by a colon, then the number 1"

"Yes, the colon key, hold down your shift key - thats the big key with the up arrows on it - then press the colon key, its the one with with the 2 dots, its next to the "L" key."

Invariably (after hearing them rustling to put the phone on their shoulder) they manage to type a semi colon.
I hope I never have to try anything more complex with my users.

Re:Not web based...

[troicstar]

upload is another story, unfortunately it *is* the only story that matters in this context and many many others.

Re:Not web based...

[DNeoMatrix]

Now you just have to make sure everyone in the world who wants to access your site uses port 8000, not very easy, especially if you have an important web app / business running on it. Personally, my port 25 (SMTP) was shut down, "Running an email server is against the contract you signed".

Re:Not web based...

[DTemp]

But see, here's the thing: You can set up a web server on whatever port you want, and be clever and get it to work. However you're still (I think) in violation of your customer agreement with Comcast, because they don't want you to have a web server, any HTTP/HTTPS access, on ANY PORT period. So you might get around their port 80 block, but if they were to find you out, they could still do anything from sending you a friendly notice to stop, to shut down your service.

Re:Not web based...

[Anonymous Coward]

"You need to login as root".

"root?"

"yes, the superuser account. Login as root.
The password is abc123."

"It says access denied."
"you must have typed the password wrong. Try again. abc123"
"Nope. Access denied."
  [repeat 5 times]

"Man. I don't get it. You're logging in as root right? r-o-o-t"

"No. I was putting r-u-t-e"

Re:Not web based...

[mgv]

You sound like you go through something similar.
I have to guide people through typing a colon key every couple of days and 99% don't know what I mean.

"OK, in the host name box, type our domain name followed by a colon, then the number 1"

"Yes, the colon key, hold down your shift key - thats the big key with the up arrows on it - then press the colon key, its the one with with the 2 dots, its next to the "L" key."

Try telling them that its like typing a capital "L", but hit the key one to the right of the "l" key.

Probably easier than explaining how to use a shift key, which most of your users do know as a way of getting capitals.

Michael

Re:Not web based...

[tomhudson]

... which is why you need real competition and net neutrality ...

Re:Not web based...

[tomhudson]

... wel, you can always email them the link, and "explain" that you're using an alternate port as "security through obscurity" (people who don't know $@@ will eat it up :-)

Alternatively, you can have a door page that sits on a server elsewhere on port 80, and does a redirect.

Re:Not web based...

[ivucica]

Croatian language is so simpler here ... "dvotocka" -- "doubledot" :)

That's not what TFA says

[niceone]

Hmm, the summary says we'll have home servers "rendering Apple's .Mac accourendering Apple's .Mac accounts and Google's productivity software uselessnts and Google's productivity software useless".

But TFA's only mention of Google or .Mac says:

The technorati among you may protest: Why do we need home servers when everything is migrating online? Google has a full suite of productivity software available that works through a Web browser, and services like .Mac function as an online virtual server for home and small business users without bringing IT problems home. Combine that with a general trend toward higher bandwidth, and the distinction between your network and the Internet becomes almost academic. Nevertheless, the end result is the same: a server massive, networked, securely backed up and well-managed storage that is accessible from anywhere.

which is not the same thing at all.

Re:That's not what TFA says

[Anonymous Coward]

Well good. I have a positive impression of Popular Mechanics and a negative one for Slashdot once again.

Because I was just about to say -- no, web applications won't die. Believe me, not everyone wants their own server. At home, or anywhere else.

Re:That's not what TFA says

[kripkenstein]

Indeed, TFA says something completely different than the Slashdot summary. It says that .Mac and Google datahosting are basically the same as a 'home server' solution. Furthermore, it is quickly obvious that the opposite of what TFA says is true: in 10 years, everyone will use a .Mac/Google datahosting solution, and not a home server, since

1. The functionality is essentially the same, given broadband, the only difference being problems when the connection is down. Paying for a physical home server and maintaining it more than offsets that cost.

2. Home users don't have the same misgivings that corporations have with hosting their data remotely, especially if the remote hosting solution is more convenient. And it will be. So essentially the only argument against remote hosting is eliminated for home users.

Google's got the right approach, Microsoft with Home Server will be proven wrong. My 2 cents.

Re:That's not what TFA says

[masdog]

Google's got the right approach, Microsoft with Home Server will be proven wrong. My 2 cents.

I think you're wrong. .MAC/Google are not the same as what Microsoft Home Server is. MS Home Server isn't much more than a (arguably) smarter NAS device for storing your photos, digital video, and TiVO files while allowing you to access them remotely if you choose to. It won't compete with Google unless they try to offer an Internet-based NAS.

Re:That's not what TFA says

[Corwn of Amber]

If you can access them remotely, why can't the device just connect to the Net, register a DynDNS for itself and display the URL on some screen?

That's brain-dead-easy to develop and deploy if you have some people on staff. Let's say 8 admins with a lot of scripts... Since it's Microsoft, they run Windows, thus ensuring that any server that goes down (and they need quadruple redundancy) can be brought back up with a simple reboot.
WTF am I saying? Even my box could probably manage DNS for some gazillions of such accounts, given enough bandwidth...

Re:That's not what TFA says

[im_thatoneguy]

Yeah but try moving 2TB of data over to your .Mac or Google datahosting solution.

The future is in rich media. People are amassing vast volumes of data every day. The future is a system in which they can access all of the data instantaneously. The webbandwidth curve and the home storage capacity are not in sync. This is why it's still a hastle to upload a 100MB file but the average user seems to have 100GB of movies.

Just my My Documents folder is something like 60GB. There is no way I'm going to upload that to the internet anytime soon, and yet the strength of an online system is when all of the data is available not just a small selection. You can never know when you need that rendering from June of 2003 that you thought you would never need again.

Re:That's not what TFA says

[im_thatoneguy]

Actually there is a video on Channel 9 about their peer to peer DNS system as well as a server side DNS offered by microsoft free for vista customers.

Router/Server

[Ramble]

I agree, but I don't like the current implementation. Products like Windows Home Server won't appeal to the masses, they'll see it as too hard. What we need is a mixture between a router and a server, something that's easy to setup, small, cheap and is able to use storage spread over a numebr of PCs to share media and information.

Re:Router/Server

[whiteranger99x]

It's bad enough that most people have their routers left at their default password, now they're going to have servers like that too...hmmmmm. >:)

Re:Router/Server

[tomhudson]

easy to setup, small, cheap and is able to use storage spread over a numebr of PCs to share media and information.

It's called "Windows Botnet Home Server Edition"

Re:Router/Server

[leonem]

An alternative to this is that the central 'router' contain almost everything - CPU(s), HDs, RAM - and then you have a variety of clients. So your PC becomes just a terminal, as does your 'phone'.

There would be three types of device: the 'server' (which most people would probably just think of as 'the PC'), terminals (anything capable of full IO with the server) and very lightweight devices like the fridge, which don't give you access to everything, but can now communicate.

I like this system because as soon as bandwidth is large enough to handle piping the graphics to your terminal, the need to shove all that processing power and storage into handheld devices and laptops disappears. Much simpler, and probably much cheaper in the end.

Re:Router/Server

[Tim_UWA]

Someone needs to write a virus that silently installs a bit torrent client, uploads a whole bunch of torrents and lets me steal all of their media.

Re:Router/Server

[DNeoMatrix]

Bandwidth is essentially available already. I have my family running a couple linux-boxes with about 200MHz, and like 64 MB ram, they just RD into the same server and has access to anything they need, i don'tthink adding something like a smart fridge or microwave to this would hinder the bandwidth that much, the WAN end is where you start to see the problems

Re:Router/Server

[leonem]

I've not found VNC to be fast enough on my home network for things that refresh quickly like movies, but then I've just set it up to allow the mac mini I have as a server to be accessed from various machines - I have no doubt a carefully configured Linux setup would be more efficient. The WAN is certainly the key for devices that stay with you, like a laptop or phone. Either way, as soon as there's enough bandwidth to stream what's on the monitor at a decent clip, there's no longer any need to have device-local storage or processing power beyond what's needed to run the (very thin) OS.

Just imagine, you put your phone down on a table, it projects a screen onto the nearest wall and a keyboard onto the desk, and off you go! (Yes, I know this would use crazy amounts of power, can't a guy dream?)

Re:Router/Server

[humpolec]

Piping graphics is OK, if we're not talking about games. The latency may be too high.

Garbage powered spaceship

[Anonymous Coward]

Now there's an idea. Although, I guess they'd call it iSpaceShip.

Very strange "article"

[VampireByte]

Seems more like an HP ad. Doesn't explain why this home server would replace web apps. Even if someone could design one machine that could be a central server for all your devices, why would it also host applications? How will it be updated and won't it be updated from some server outside the home? What home user is going to keep it secure (how many open wifi connections to "linksys" can you find right now)?

What a dumb assessment

[neoform]

This basically assumes google and apple are going to be sitting on their hands for the next decade not changing their products in the slightest.

Obviously as things change they'll evolve their services to meet demand.

Re:What a dumb assessment

[Anonymous Coward]

IT also makes the incredibly naive assumption that your ISP is going to happily allow you to run your server connected tothe net with open ports serving to the outside world. almost ALL TOS agreements are against that and it will only get worse. Most Isp's are now blocking lots of the typical incoming ports and then they dynamically block off ports if they see too much traffic on them.

Honestly the article is some little known futurist or technologist that is simply spewing forth words that he has no idea as to their meaning. The man does not know what he is talking about and in the true popular science fashion making predictions with no basis other than "ohh shiny!"

Re:What a dumb assessment

[maxume]

Version controlled network stores with seamless local caching on whatever device is handy are the future. Unfortunately, the somewhat distant future, but fortunately, it is getting closer all the time(tautologically, of course).

Backend wise, storing and accessing gigabytes worth of data from Amazon is already something like $20 a year, so it isn't like it is too expensive to do.

Re:What a dumb assessment

[SillyNickName4me]

Funny, where I live (the Netherlands), almost every DSL provider allows running a server, whereas most cable providers do not.

It probably suggests something about why competition is such a good idea..

need?

[polar red]

I wonder what all these home appliances need so much cpu power+storage for that you need a central server? Can't you hook up these things with USB to your PC ?

Re:need?

[maxume]

The trick is in hooking them up to two or more PCs at the same time.

Well, and I predict...

[ABoerma]

...that in 10 years time some ninety percent of current technology will be rendered useless.

Re:Well, and I predict...

[Anne Thwacks]

that in 10 years time some ninety percent of current technology will be rendered useless.

Probably not. Any amount of people are still running home servers on Pentium Is. I myself am spending this bank holiday weekend migrating our family server from an AMD k6 450 MHz running FreeBSD to an UltraSparc 450MHz running OpenBSD.

Over Christmas we made two Pentium II workstations redundant, replacing them with new P4's. The P IIs are now on their way to Sierra Leone, where they will probably run for another ten years Most likely with pirate copies on Win2k, not supplied by me - I wiped the hard drives and supplied an Ubuntu install CD.

This new fangled technology is highly over rated.

Re:Well, and I predict...

[ivucica]

Long live Intel 8088!

doubtful

[somelucky]

Even in the future the main problem with this setup is reliablity. I have had a server in my home doing these functions for many years. However I would never rely upon it to be the same as a real internet server providing these services. When the power goes out at home, most of the time it will stay down until I get back home. I do agree that in the future we may not have to pay a premium to get 'business class' type access that we do today.

Re:doubtful

[b0s0z0ku]

Even in the future the main problem with this setup is reliablity. I have had a server in my home doing these functions for many years. However I would never rely upon it to be the same as a real internet server providing these services. When the power goes out at home, most of the time it will stay down until I get back home.

I'm running OBSD with a backup mail exchanger. If power goes down and comes back up (and the limits of the UPS are exceeded), the box just reboots. Mail stored in the interim is sent to it from the backup MX.

-b.

Re:doubtful

[senatorpjt]

I do agree that in the future we may not have to pay a premium to get 'business class' type access that we do today.

That's the thing I don't agree with. The point of "business class" access is guaranteed reliability - The telephone was invented a long time ago, and they still won't guarantee it. Having to provide same-day service under penalty to everyone is just unfeasible.

Re:doubtful

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, what's a "real internet server"? Is that like one that's connected to a "series of tubes"

From Popular Mechanics

[Chairboy]

I have old copies of Popular Mechanics going back twenty years, and let's discuss some of their predictions. According to them:

* I have a landing pad built into the roof of my house for my flying car.
* When I need to get to Europe from New York, I take the subway to a special terminal that connects me to a train that shoots under the Atlantic at thousands of miles per hour in a vacuum.
* On the rare instances I don't take the super train, I take a Bell Osprey derivative shuttle to the local airport where I don't even need to get out of my seat, because it follows a track built into the shuttle and the airport and automatically zips me into my waiting hypersonic sub-orbital jetliner (which, for some reason, seems to go nowhere but Tokyo).
* I can fix my hot water heater by removing the broken heating element and replacing it with a new one from the hardware store. Possibly the most ridiculous prediction/claim of all.

I like their enthusiasm, and the pictures and ads are great, but I'm not quite ready to start shorting stock in companies based on a Popular Mechanics prediction.

Re:From Popular Mechanics

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually enjoy wrong predictions more than correct predictions. At least they have the balls to make them. My friend just forwarded a list of 50 predictions made in the early 1900's. I think that it was from Lady's Home Journal. I've got to say, it was almost too unbelieveable to enjoy.

Re:From Popular Mechanics

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.yorktownhistory.org/homepages/1900_pred ictions.htm

Re:From Popular Mechanics

[Nethead]

astounding how many were right.

Re:From Popular Mechanics

[noidentity]

"* I can fix my hot water heater by removing the broken heating element and replacing it with a new one from the hardware store. Possibly the most ridiculous prediction/claim of all."

Especially since the water is already hot!

Re:From Popular Mechanics

[frankmu]

they had prior art for the internet! Prediction #22: Store Purchases by Tube. Pneumatic tubes, instead of store wagons, will deliver packages and bundles. These tubes will collect, deliver and transport mail over certain distances, perhaps for hundreds of miles. They will at first connect with the private houses of the wealthy; then with all homes. Great business establishments will extend them to stations, similar to our branch post-offices of today, whence fast automobile vehicles will distribute purchases from house to house. thanks for the link.

And who will run them?

[Pigeon451]

With Google apps and such, you just need to log in and take care of your business. No need to worry about server updates, hacking, spam, etc. A home server takes a little effort for someone who knows how to run one, but can take a lot of time for someone unfamiliar with servers.

ARGH! Massive feature missing

[UserChrisCanter4]

Windows Home Server is absolutely baffling to me. The cat is out of the bag on NAS devices for the power users and self-built servers for the geeks. The average user is still years away from such a device. .Mac is about way, WAY more than backup (namely iWeb/photocasts/blogging/etc, which are things I have no use for even with two macs).

So, why, oh why, is Windows Home Server missing the feature that I'd happily pay for: Media Center integration?

It seems like a no-brainer. Media Center computers can tell a central server, the one with two or three tuners and four or five hard drives, to record a show. Then the Media Center computer gets turned off, and the Home Server does all of the heavy lifting. It's been around in MythTV for quite a while, and the OSS windows app MediaPortal allegedly supports it (although it looks a little in the early stages now.)

I like Media Center, for reasons that I've documented earlier, and I think networked MCEs would be even better for the MCE's current market. I'm just confused about why such a relatively simple concept hasn't been executed by MS. Even though my earlier post points out why MCE hasn't been as successful as MS hoped, it still has a strong market among HDTV PVR users and video geeks, and I can't help but think that network integration would get them closer to where they want to be.

Unless something has drastically changed in the three years since I graduated from college and stopped working in computer stores, the average user is going to walk right past Home Servers for another few years. Even though it had never been officially discussed, I kept holding out hope that the computer press' occasional mention of MCE-integration as a nifty idea was a clever NDA dodge. I guess I'll have to keep waiting.

I don't think I know anyone...

[Anonymous Coward]

in the UK who doesn't have a 'home server'. Even if it's just their old system networked to their latest Pc as a file repository. Even my father has this, and he's 89.

Re:I don't think I know anyone...

[leenks]

I live in the UK and work as a developer/architect and I think I'm the only person I know, even considering my colleagues, with a home server. My parents certainly don't either. Unless you count wireless routers as servers, or the Windows trojans sharing their files to the world? ;-)

Those aren't your grandma's apps...

[DMouse]

The major things i like about google's web based word app are:

1) it is someone else's responsibility to back it up, cluster it, load balance it, and improve it,
2) it is social, i can include other people in on my document edits easily,
3) i can effortlessly access it from anywhere, be it uni, work, home or a cafe.

Home based servers currently have none of the above, and until we get cheap at home clustering and easy ability to host apps on home adsl we still wont.

Re:Those aren't your grandma's apps...

[owlnation]

Home based servers currently have none of the above, and until we get cheap at home clustering and easy ability to host apps on home adsl we still wont.

I think you probably mean home T1 - home adsl isn't going to be very useful for most us for hosting our own servers.

TFA is nonsense on so many levels. I like the parent's posts about Writely and do share them. Google and Apple are some of the least stupid companies currently around in the tech market. I'm pretty sure they'll figure something out in 10 years. This also assumes that someone is going to develop server software that's "one-click" enough for the average home user.

Hands up everyone that's helped a friend, relative, neighbor set up their wireless LAN. How do you feel about getting the call to help them set up their server? Not so much? Exactly how I feel about it.

For that reason alone, we are very far away from a home server set up for most poeple.

Re:Those aren't your grandma's apps...

[jgrahn]

The major things i like about google's web based word app are:

1) it is someone else's responsibility to back it up, cluster it, load balance it, and improve it, 2) it is social, i can include other people in on my document edits easily, 3) i can effortlessly access it from anywhere, be it uni, work, home or a cafe.

Home based servers currently have none of the above

Mine has (2) and (3) and as for (1), clustering/load balancing is of course not needed. I'd happily let some organization do my backups, if it could be trusted. Hell, I'd replace my home server with a Unix shell account at some ISP, if I felt I could trust one.

Re:Those aren't your grandma's apps...

[Corwn of Amber]

STFU with your T1. It is slower than ADSL, which is absolute CRAP by the way : no-one REALLY wants a 90/10 connexion!! SDSL now that's something. Last-mile over wireless, that's even much better. The access will be on a public, locally-administered budget, with a federal agency to check that it works and that there's no fraud.
(Translated into American.)

Re:Those aren't your grandma's apps...

[DMouse]

I'm from Oz, ADSL is about the only home connectivity option we get. =)

All well and good

[Allicorn]

But what I'd like to know is how we're all going to be able to access these hundreds of Tbs of media from our ubiquitous home servers when we're out and about in our flying cars?

Assertions Straight out of his ass

[blantonl]

Let me be the first to say that Glenn literally pulled this assertion straight out of his ass.

No one can argue against home media servers driving innovation into the household, especially around automation and media management - but to displace software as a service? GoogleApps? I don't even in the slightest see where these two things correlate.

GoogleApps and .MAC (the two examples citied) not only provide value as a collaboration platform, but they are also extremely well designed, and cost effective for the business community. If anyone thinks that I'm going to plunk down 2K on an HP Media Server, and all the sudden declare my independence from Software as Service for the business purposes... well... you get the point - it's utter BS.

Glenn literally did 2 things.

1. Plugged HP's products (successfully)
2. Showed how absolutely absurd some columists can be (successfully)

Re:Assertions Straight out of his ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me be the first to say that Glenn literally pulled this assertion straight out of his ass. I though I smelled something...

Re:Assertions Straight out of his ass

[b0s0z0ku]

and all the sudden declare my independence from Software as Service for the business purposes

A lot of businesses are still uncomfortable with Software as a Service. Something about their private documents being stored somewhere that's not under their control. For businesses, if Google was smart, they would come out with an Google Apps Appliance that hosts the apps and their data locally, has secure web access and Google's version of dynamic DNS, includes a VPN server, and has an easy way of backing up daily, either to an external SFTP server or to local removable media.

-b.

Re:Assertions Straight out of his ass

[baldbobbo]

Absolutely correct. First, naturally, is the oversight of the casual user of .Mac or Google Apps. I'd say that just about every casual user would not be willing to purchase a server, set it up at home, then go through customizing their own applications. This is because they're a CASUAL user. If it were someone who is making their own Google Apps, then yes, these server products would easily affect the market for .Mac and Google Apps. But since these kind of users make up a small percentage, the author of this column is looking at a select people and making a conclusion for a much larger group of individuals.

Re:Assertions Straight out of his ass

[Servants]

No one can argue against home media servers driving innovation into the household, especially around automation and media management - but to displace software as a service? GoogleApps? I don't even in the slightest see where these two things correlate.

Actually, if you read the article, Glenn would seem to agree with you completely; his suggested uses for home servers are pretty much identical to yours. He only brings up Google Apps and .MAC as an argument against home servers. As is so often the case, the article title and summary are wrong.

Brilliant!

[splortnik2003]

Of course none of us will use toll highways as our cars will be fitted with miniaturized paving machines built into the front bumper. Witness the end of the label-dinosaurs of the music industry as tiny devices algorithmically turn the sounds of our own farts into the sweetest music! (Actually, the last idea sounds pretty good. Not sure why there's a 1. Troll, 2. Plug HP, 3. Profit ad on the front page of slashdot, tho.)

Re:Brilliant!

[whiteranger99x]

Witness the end of the label-dinosaurs of the music industry as tiny devices algorithmically turn the sounds of our own farts into the sweetest music!

You obviously haven't listened to new music lately...although we are missing the devices so it just sounds like a bunch of diarrhea.

But Seriously

[joe_n_bloe]

Why do I want an extra "hub" computer in my house when it's already a pain in the ass to keep a WEP-enabled wireless router working, and I actually know what I'm doing.

I'd rather let the guys at Google provide my word processor without my having to find room for another plug in my power strip. I've had enough DIY in my life. But y'all feel free.

Re:But Seriously

[b0s0z0ku]

Why do I want an extra "hub" computer in my house when it's already a pain in the ass to keep a WEP-enabled wireless router working, and I actually know what I'm doing.

WEP-enabled? No WPA? That means that it's probably 2-3 years old -- maybe it's time to upgrade or at least get new firmware?

BTW, my router and server have been working fine for the best part of a year. No hassles. Then again, I use OpenBSD for anything that I really care about. Not very featureful, but robust as a tank.

I'd rather let the guys at Google provide my word processor without my having to find room for another plug in my power strip.

I'd rather my word processor run locally -- like MS Word or OpenOffice. That way, it's always accessible, I know where my documents are stored, etc. As far as backups, I just have a program that backs up to my BSD box regularly (even when I'm travelling, it can connect via SSH VPN).

-b.

Re:But Seriously

[Lumpy]

The other problem is that tech is actually going the OPPOSITE way he thinks he sees.

home servers? nope. that is not gonna happen. Low power appliances that use 15-18 watts of power instead of the 470 that a server uses will start to appear more and more. NAS manufactureres are gettign the idea that their product is crap if it does not support NFS and SMB out of the box, nobody wants to install a special driver to access their low power NAS. High power servers are stupid in the home, you are not running a 2TB sql database with 30 people accessing it with nested queries. Via C7 processors are going to start taking over in lots of these places with their low power use and low processing power to act as a glorified file server/NAS as companies realize that upnp for video and audio is retarted and switch to native players that simply play from the file share.

the server will end up being that Media PC under the TV. it needs to be on 24/7 for recording so it can server triple duty and do everything else.

Problem though. Content providers dont want you to get automatic content. so onlythe high IQ and IT specalists will have it. as they will need to tweak scripts weekly or monthly to get that video feed or news feed or audio feed they are scraping to work again. The general consumer will never have this as its too complicated and scary to them. General population technology education will continue to drop as nobody is forced to actually learn anything.

Homes will revert to the single PC. No servers. just a media pc that will do 1/2 of what they want and frustrate them about the other 1/2 not working.

Re:But Seriously

[Paulrothrock]

WEP? Thanks for the free wifi, buddy!

To the left of !, or above Tab

[tepples]

"That squiggly line thingee."
"Oh, okay." ... pause ... I can't find it.
"The one next to the one."
"The one next to which key?" On at least U.S. layouts, would "the key to the left of exclamation point" or "the key above Tab" be easier to understand?

Re:To the left of !, or above Tab

[Inner_Child]

"the key to the left of exclamation point"

A better way to explain it, because everyone knows that one, unfortunately most of them don't believe in doing things in moderation.

Re:To the left of !, or above Tab

[Stewie241]

or even:
The key to the left of the '1' key.

or,
The key to the left of the 'one' key.

or,
the key above the 'tab' key.

Useless?

[Wister285]

This article seems to be in the typical tradition of Slashdot sensationalism. HP bringing a new product to market that competes with Google's and Apple's products doesn't mean that one should automatically assume that older products become obsolete. HP's product doesn't solve the fundamental purpose of the other companies' applications. Google's and Apple's products are able to be used anywhere simply by logging into the web interface. This is the simplicity that people want. People have enough problems just from setting up their computers, so it is doubtful that within five, or even ten years, that people are going to want to manage a central home server. For better or worse, software as a service is something that big companies are pushing more and more. Despite technical or philosophical objections, its adoption will come down to one thing: whether a significant number of people believe that it increases their quality of life. Software as a service makes sense to a lot of people. Only their willingness pay for it will dictate how quickly it becomes popular.

Re:Useless?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with your point. The binary thinking is pretty useless. Gmail vs. Yahoo mail vs Hotmail? - I have multiple accounts on all three! Windows vs. Macs vs. Linux - I use them all too!

mindless drivel about the future of computers

[digitalsushi]

I've been asking friends lately what they expect 10 years from now will be like for the average computer user. About ten of us have, after some long coffee breaks, decided that it'll be something like this:

No one will buy desktop PCs. in 2017 everything will be similar to what we call a laptop today. Data won't be stored on the laptops. Some people will have servers at home, but these people will be eccentric folks like us that host our own web, mail, et cetera in 2007 -- the fringe users. Everyone else will store their data online somewhere. Bandwidth will be charged by the pound instead of flat rate, but it will be very afforadable -- copying a terabyte to home won't cause more than a second of consideration. People will still have workstation caliber desktops, but those will be specialized machines much as they are today, overpowered for a certain task. By 2017, ipv6 is finally mainstream but just barely. Mobile devices will have aggregated down into a single device-- music, cell, radio, visual-- everyone will have the same typical device they carry that does everything, and it will work well. By then, everything will be aware of your biostats if you let it, so your music can follow your general mood, et cetera. They won't be psychic, just dumbly intelligent. Other than that, we decided that technology will be a lot less visible-- as it gets good/small enough to start hiding away in things, so it shall. Presentation will lose its glamour for the most part, and homes will actually look less teched out like they did before the 80s rose.

I'd love to hear other people's imagination reply to these inevitably wrong projections :)

Re:mindless drivel about the future of computers

[QAChaos]

> I'd love to hear other people's imagination reply to these inevitably wrong projections :) -- and little elves and unicorns will administer these machines... even though I don't agree I like that these options for the mainstream are becoming available... families in suburbia can basically have the same infrastructure that .com's had in the 90's. post a couple of flyers around the neighborhood and you have yourself a money making sysadmin job supporting families... - QAK

Re:mindless drivel about the future of computers

[Cheeze]

"Bandwidth will be charged by the pound instead of flat rate, but it will be very afforadable "

I'm not sure how much a packet, bit or byte weighs, but it better be affordable.

Re:mindless drivel about the future of computers

[Anonymous Coward]

You can pry my desktop out of my cold, dead, hands.

Not a chance in hell I'm ever abandonning them.

Why?

Is there an 8-core mobile workstation? Sure it's excessive today, but what about tomorrow?

Otherwise, I do beleive many people will have mobile devices, mostly all-in-one solutions. The everything-online theory is a bit iffy, of course, for the most part these people IE, so anything could happen. I know I'm still going to keep my data where I can keep an eye on it.

Re:mindless drivel about the future of computers

[leonem]

I reckon there's a lot of sense to that. One can even envisage a situation where you pay a hire fee for a given level of processing power, another for your storage, and another for bandwidth. Any of these could be pay-as-you-go or pay monthly, so if you suddenly need to process something huge, you pay your money and it's done in seconds, or you let it chug away and do it on the cheap on your contract. Similarly, you can have streaming access to your data fast enough that you're effectively carrying everything in your phone, or you can have it cache locally and be more selective.

Re:mindless drivel about the future of computers

[Nate4D]

I actually think it'll go the opposite way.

My hunch is that as the general public becomes more technically savvy, and storage devices get smaller, you'll actually wind up carrying your entire computational environment everywhere with you, operating system, applications, data, and all, on a little flash-drive-like thing about the size of a credit card.

You can actually do this today, if you're mildly geeky - a 2 gig flash drive and a lightweight Linux distro leaves you plenty of room to do most of your daily activities, and you can use it on any fairly recent Intel machine. (though we'll need to do something about those boot times...)

So anyway, I'd expect to see a standard terminal appear, which is probably an x86 piece of hardware, that boots off your little data cartridge, and you go on your merry way.

This has the advantage of the net-based computing paradigm - your personal setup and applications, everywhere you go. It doesn't have the massive problems of net-based computing, like completely losing access to your data when a fiber-seeking backhoe takes out your net connection.

Yeah, it would be pretty easy to lose your data, by losing the card, but there'll always be online backup services, like Apple's .Mac, and creating a backup that's not online wouldn't be too hard either. Encryption probably becomes more important, since if you lose this little storage device, someone else could probably break into it easily.

Re:mindless drivel about the future of computers

[maxume]

I look forward to the day when I can turn my bay window into a TV. And conversely, when I can turn my TV into a bay window, if I no longer have a view.

Re:mindless drivel about the future of computers

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are all reality today. Except for ipv6. And bandwidth is flat rate.

My predictions:

In 2017 we'll have TiVo-like appliance servers for storing local copies of all our crap, which is then encrypted and mirrored on the internets (unencrypted storage providers having been copydenied to death.) Hard disk crashes will be history thanks to cheap solid state disks and batteries. Landline net will be 10Gbps, mobile net 1Gbps. Google stock is $80, with most people migrated away from their search. Microsoft Operating Systems Inc. introduces Plan9-based Windows World.

Web will be a much more programmable entity, and there'll be a service discovery service for seamlessly farming out your tasks to the nearby devices. E.g. the process of doing a presentation will be: 1) use handiest computing device nearby to open the (network-stored) presentation file, 2) select this room's projector and sound system as output (selected as default.)

Re:mindless drivel about the future of computers

[ScottyB]

There's one major wildcard in your predictions--batteries (or mobile power solutions, in the case of things like methanol-based fuel cells). I think you're on the mark with respect to the home environment--laptops and off-site storage--since we're almost there now in major cities where bandwidth is plentiful (e.g., FiOS) and with people storing everything on gmail and photo sites.

The mobile landscape outside of the home, though, will be heavily dependent on how batteries develop. Without some breakthrough in power density and miniturization, we'll still be stuck with mobile devices like laptops and iPhones that are limited to 3 or 4 hours of use, which is just not enough to provide the reliability needed to really achieve the integration to which you refer because of people's cell phone needs. Plus, physically it's impossible to achieve the quality of a typical Canon digital camera with your mobile device because you need a retractable lens. So, I think for the moment, barring any clever innovations for improving cell phone cameras or lengthening battery life, the mobile device landscape in 2017 probably won't look too different than what we have now.

And, people won't want to pay twice for the computer they use in the home and on the go, so we'll still be using a laptop of some sort in 2017.

Re:mindless drivel about the future of computers

[Kjella]

I don't think people will be online "everywhere" to the point of not needing local storage. I'm sure that you can get some sort of low-bandwidth wireless most places, but just judging from how pissed I've seen people that lose access becomes, well... Also there are plenty areas where you can't go faster than a slow DSL/cable line and still won't in another 10 years. Working with any sort of media files, music, movies, pictures etc. would be too slow. Imagine synching your iPod over a 2Mbit Internet connection instead of a local disk or home server with gigabit ethernet. I think basic interface problems will keep everything from melting together, my laptop could never become my cell phone or vice versa. I do think the iPod will merge with the cell phone though. And if what you said became true, I think the BSA/RIAA/MPAA/NSA/everyone will fight like hell to run scans on that datastore, which would kill it for many people.

I would have a better belief in the media server, except you can't out of the box do basic things like store your DVD movies on them. (Yes, I know how easy it is to get circumvention software, most people don't). For that reason I think most people will still have a DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-Ray player for movies, a laptop and a cell phone. Online services are a supplement which will surely grow but I only think they will dominate if and only if you can take say a document with you offline and work somewhere else, or import it in another service. Also, I think a new kind of thick "remote application" framework needs to be in place, web applications are at times incredibly limiting to work with because they're inside a web browser. I'm not thinking about reinventing X, more something like a high-level protocol that lets you draw dialogs, progressbars, handle shortcuts, context menus and such on a remote computer.

Re:mindless drivel about the future of computers

[ushering05401]

This is one of the more refreshing threads I have read on this site in a while.

One note on the whole retractable lens thing... and this is way out there but something I incorporated in a sci-fi story of mine. With the seemingly unhaltable progress towards a totally monitored society why not just provide an interface to the public monitoring devices. In fact, this could be used to halt discretionary use of such systems (where privileged individuals are not held to account for indescretions while others are).

Reducing the level of privacy allowed individuals seems to be a primary objective of many developed countries. I will leave it to the reader to decide why this is the case.

Anyhow, assuming that the concept that things done in public are legal to photograph remains unchallenged why not profit off access to the public monitoring systems. Youtube takes on a whole new meaning when posters are able to troll (future) hi-res public surveillance systems for fodder.

Don't get me wrong, I would rather not have these systems at all, but the public in general does not seem to care about the tradeoffs involved in being monitored every minute of the day.

Think of American football and the recently introduced ability to move to multiple vantage points on the field contiguously. Using this technology you could record your special or artistic moments after the fact from the best vantage possible... Much more efficiently than you could with a personal camera.

Regards.

Re:mindless drivel about the future of computers

[abb3w]

No one will buy desktop PCs. in 2017 everything will be similar to what we call a laptop today.

While I think you're right that (barring major societal shocks) laptops will be a massive majority, there will still be some reasons for a "desktop". Primarily, users who are elderly and disabled. My sister has secondary progressive MS; she uses a two-monitor setup (one for the desktop, one for Windows magnifier) to improve visibility. She's considering switching to a flat panel TV or to an overhead LCD projector after she the house purchase is finalized, but the two LCD screens gives more desktop pixel-acreage. Also, there's no way she could use a laptop keyboard or trackpad; she uses a BigKeys keyboard and Trackball Mouse for manual input when coding, but mostly relies DragonVoice for input in word processing and email.

Of course, "desktops" for most of these users may look more like a Mac Mini than a Lian Li Server Case. There will also be (as you note) the fringe crowd, running giant honking servers from paranoia or for amusement, fiddling with technology just to see what it can be made to do; but I bet this group will be smaller than those who use small desktops from need.

Re:mindless drivel about the future of computers

[simong]

I think you're underestimating how fast battery technology moves, and how fast systems decrease in size: when 3G phones first appeared in the UK they were like the brickphones of the early 90s, but now my 3G and WiFi enabled Nokia E61 is slightly wider than a regular phone and about as slim. Surfing using 3G or WiFi is a battery hog but mean time between charges is two to three days of occasional use. I also think that we are reaching the limits of the size of the phone and personal device now for reasons of usability, and that they could go one of two ways: the truly personal device that will be a pocket sized 'candybar' like the iPhone that provides a big chunk of memory for storage and apps to retrieve that storage, or a terminal device that acts as a portal to externally stored data and applications that are paid for by subscription. Either way, this device could plug into a home system to provide different user interfaces for work and play. It sounds too straightforward even as I'm writing it but look at the way in which personal computing has changed in the last ten years and consider the personal applications that have evolved since then.

Dupe!!

[Anonymous Coward]

everyone will have a home server to network their house within 10 years

This story obviously is more than 10 years old when nobody had the need to protect himself with a home-server running tor, freenet and torrent from citizen-hating-goverments and customer-hating-Mafiaa.

Um

[sogoodsofarsowhat]

For $599 Apple already makes the Home Server its called a Mac Mini and is way better a solution than this HP Ad that /. is promoting.

Re:Um

[shmlco]

Apple NEEDS to make a home server. A Mac mini with an 80GB notebook HD does not a server make. Make a miniServe that holds a couple of full size HDs and supports 802.11n for the same price and MAYBE we can talk...

Re:Um

[cmarkn]

A Mac Mini has 2 USB ports and a Firewire port. Add cables and hubs, and you have all the disk space you want.

Re:Um

[shmlco]

Try again: Make a miniServe that holds a couple of full size HDs and supports 802.11n FOR THE SAME PRICE.

Buying a bunch of cables, hubs, and external drives adds quite a bit to the price. Especially when I'm overpaying for expensive 2.5" notebook drives that are far too small for any serious server-type work.

I doubt it. What happends when it breaks.

[jellomizer]

The problem with a home server is to keep it running. .Mac, Google Apps, spend a lot of time and money (well at least I really hope) to make sure their servers are running backed up and have plenty of fail over. For most people if they have a consumer friendly home server it will be all and good until it breaks then you are SOL all your years of collected pictures... Gone, your important stuff gone... And who is to blame for it yourself. .Mac and Google (I Hope) have trained administers with backup systems that keep them running and if a system crashes you data is still there. Also your data is available from anywhere where there is an internet connection. We are getting more and more mobile with computing laptops are common now for normal use, Cellphones, PDAs are getting more and more powerful we can access the internet from anywhere. With a Home Server we will need to set up correct permissions keep track of security updates if we want external access and with most broadband connections have a much smaller up stream the server will be very slow from a remote location.

This would have been a good idea 10 years ago, where most internet was Dialup and Slow and most people had Desktop that they did work from home, but today it is a case of too little to late. We don't want a server anymore We want someone else to have a server and us to have access to it, and not worry about maintaining it.

Home-Based Servers Versus Hosted Apps

[peterbiltman]

One of the big reasons that I believe home based servers will triumph over hosted apps is the very same reason that they do in any organization -- security and privacy. Case in point, about 6 months ago after being a fan of Gmail for a long time I pulled the plug. Why? Reading the local newspaper one day I saw an article about how the courts have ruled that if your e-mail is stored on someone elses server they don't need a warrant for it. I'm not sure how universal this is, or if it was just in one particular jurisdiction, but that was enough to make me switch. I now run my own mail server.

Similarly the same goes for hosted apps. It's great they are backing it up, but remember, it only takes one rogue employee to sell your secrets to your competitor. If you are a business storing business-related documents on a hosted service you are at the mercy of the hosted company. You can say "it won't happen because of XYZ" all you want, but again it only takes one rogue employee working for the hosting company. Furthermore, if you are a public company or deal with sensitive information -- forget about it -- unless you want to be out of business tomorrow.

Centralized storage and data manipulation is the key -- whether that be in the home or the workplace. We are just now entering into this market and I think we are going to see some really good innovations come of it.

And, personally, yes I've tried out the Beta of Windows Home Server. My thoughts? I love it. It has a few features missing, but when it goes "gold" I plan on switching my home server over to it.

Re:Home-Based Servers Versus Hosted Apps

[The Cisco Kid]

A. "Microsoft's Windows Home Server software"

I have no response. I'm too busy rolling on the floor laughing insanely. A Microsoft box should never be connected directly to the Internet without either a Linksys/Netgear type NAT/firewall in front of it (or a *nix based equivalent), nor would any competent non MS-brainwashed person use it as any kind of Internet server. (I know many do - doing so demonstrates their lack of competence, directly)

B. Email stored on someone else's server

No this was about email the individual had SENT to someone else. Not about email that had been received for that individual. And yes, if Joe Blow emails spam to Harry Smith, Harry Smith does not need a warrant to give it to LE. (Nor does their ISP, if they do so on their customers behalf becuase their customers are sick of drowing in spam) It wasnt the customers of the ISP that the spam that had been sent to complaining, it was the spammer who sent the mail complaining.

-

Those two items out of the way, I am one of the people that *does* have his own server. I used to be an engineer at an ISP, and I know wtf I am doing. It happens to be colocated at a former employer, rather than at home, since I want to be able to make oubound SMTP connections to the world, directly, rather than going through $cableISP's machines (and $cableISP doesnt allow that, a practive I fully understand and have no problem with)

Oh, and I also use gmail, becuase I love its interface. I cant stand most webmail, but gmail I like. I hate POP with a passion, and while I would use IMAP, there just isnt a standalone email client I like. If I could host an interface that worked exactly like gmail on my own server, I'd do it in a heartbeat (sadly, there isnt, Ive found a few projects that use the same ajax base as gmail does, but they just dont compare).

Re:Home-Based Servers Versus Hosted Apps

[b0s0z0ku]

I hate POP with a passion, and while I would use IMAP, there just isnt a standalone email client I like.

Try Thunderbird 2.0. Once it's set up correctly, it's fast and gets the job done quite well. (I actually don't use the filtering/spam capabilities, preferring my server and procmail to do it, but, it still works nicely).

-b.

Re:Home-Based Servers Versus Hosted Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree because:

• Google and Apple employees probably would rather have their job for the relatively low amount of money that your "competitor" would be paying them. (this assumes you aren't a large business)
• If it is just a rouge employee that is having a hard time with life and decides he wants to "fuck shit up" and you have sensitive data leaked, there are lawyers and courts, you'll probably come out ahead.
• It's cheaper to have them do it. (and money is the bottom line in more ways than one)
• You probably aren't going to be able to secure your home server to the level that Apple and Google can. Security is a process, your box is only "secure" until the next exploit comes out. Google and Apple almost certainly have experts that do this for them every hour of every day. You're competitor would much rather have to get data from your home server than from AAPL or the GOOG.
• Now... about the warrants... well that's a good point. Go go gadget PATRIOT Act! :-(

Re:Home-Based Servers Versus Hosted Apps

[jt2377]

"I have no response. I'm too busy rolling on the floor laughing insanely. A Microsoft box should never be connected directly to the Internet without either a Linksys/Netgear type NAT/firewall in front of it (or a *nix based equivalent), nor would any competent non MS-brainwashed person use it as any kind of Internet server. (I know many do - doing so demonstrates their lack of competence, directly)"

It amazed me how Windows server manage to keep gaining market share as Linux and eating away Unix market share. Care to explain why Windows server keep gaining ground and don't bullshit me with all the usual MS's monopoly, tactic...etc. If Unix is too expensive, Linux and BSD already out there for years before NT4 roll along. There are million of Microsoft server box connected directly to the Internet and used by million users. How the FUCK did *nix let this happen?

Re:Home-Based Servers Versus Hosted Apps

[The Cisco Kid]

Maybe I'll take a closer look, but I *really* like Google approach to organization. I like being able to quickly and easily 'grep' the entire contents of my email for any text I want. I also really like being able to get at my email anywhere that has net access, and have the same 'view' of it regardless of wether I am at home or elsewhere.

What I'd *really* love to be able to do is copy gmails front-end, and glue it to an IMAP server. I'd even be happy using Gmail itself as a client to my own IMAP server, but sadly, so far they only support POP, no IMAP.

The sky is falling!

[billcopc]

In other news, Glenn Derene has been smoking record-breaking amounts of crack and writing ridiculous counter-evolutionary articles in a pathetic attempt to garner as much attention as the inimitable John C. Dvorak.

Home servers will not replace hosted apps. If that were true, I would have stopped using web apps before they were even invented because in an apartment with just my spouse and I (no kids), I've got 14 sets of lights blinking on my switch 24/7. I roll my eyes when people talk of server "closets", unless it's a friggin' walk-in closet bigger than the bathroom! And despite all the server gear I still find a use for globally-accessible hosted apps that I don't need to maintain myself, because I've got enough things to worry about already.

Uh....why?

[DogDude]

OK, so I read the article, and I still can't figure out why people are going to need servers in their homes. What's wrong with PC's today? I wasn't aware that there were any major problems that a home server could fix.

It's not about the servers...

[silverdr]

... it's about the content and services they serve. I run a couple of servers for years now and still don't have my own maps.google.com on any of them. I don't predict having it also in ten years to come. Why would I? As for .mac - yes, I could set similar services on my own servers yet it's *cheaper* for me to use .mac than create my own...

Keep Dreaming, Glenn

[Anonymous Coward]

I love predictions like Glenn's. They remind me of those "home of the future" clips from the 40s and 50s that predicted that we'd all have automated kitchens that make meals for us and clean themselves up.

Here's my prediction: virtually no one will have a home server in 10 years. As a percentage of the total global population, I bet less than 1% has one by 2017.

Poor people will not have one.
Many old people will not have one.
Many technologically ambivalent people will not have one.

Even out of the group that I think would be most likely to have one (age 25-45, white, college educated), I doubt even a majority would have one.

The one part that made me laugh when I read it is the part that said my bedside clock will be a computer. NO IT WON'T. My bedside clock is the clock I had in college 17 years ago. I will still have it in 2017, and there's a really good chance I will still have it in 2057 when I am 86.

Non-Technical hurdles ...

[LoudMusic]

Lots of people are talking about all the technical reasons why everyone won't have a home server to replace online service and control their other devices, but how about the non-technical stuff. Like the fact that 99.9% of computer users have absolutely no clue what they're doing. They just send email and make text documents and spreadsheets. Setting up a home server, no matter how Apple-simple it gets, is a daunting task that frightens them even to think about. And coordinating it with all their other devices? Not likely. How about configuring it so you can access all your stuff from anywhere in the world? People would probably cease up and stop breathing. And there is no way, even for the most proficient of geeks, that any home user could provide themselves with as good of uptime as Google or Apple.

Re:Non-Technical hurdles ...

[salimma]

Imagine the support cost on that too. Unless future computers come with IBM mainframe-like diagnostic panels in the front that indicate if, say, the network card has failed, trying to help an end-user diagnose a non-trivial problem remotely is near-impossible, short of just asking them to send the whole unit for repair.

Trends against this

[dyfet]

There are strong political and commercial interests who activily oppose such a vision. First, there are the telcoms and cable companies who want to be gatekeepers to people's email and maintain monopolies on other services as well. Try setting up an email server on a residential service, and getting it both to successfully send email without interference by your isp, and having your email messages "accepted" by existing services, regardless of whether you have domain keys setup on your dns, etc, and you will see some of these forces in action.

As for media servers that may feed media where you want it on demand. I imagine if the RIAA and similar gangs can secure root access to your shiny new internet connected media server, say through trussed computing, and control where you are allowed to listen to your own music, along with an automated billing service, maybe then they may promote it rather than activily oppose such a vision. I could imagine such gangs buying laws that state operating "unlicensed" media servers is "intent to infringe" or some other similar kind of nonsense.

Finally, the traditional media providers and a particular software monopoly prefer a captive internet "consumer" model, starting with asymetric speeds, cemented by restrictive use contracts and finding common interest with governmental desires for increasingly filtered services, whether for imagined security threats or for unpopular governments keeping tabs on restless populations. Home servers where people can be liberated as true publishers and equals as information producers, rather than reduced to mear consumers captive to external hosted sites for what may become an ever decreasing set of tolerated forms of expression and activities, is certainly not in their agenda.

home server....please

[proadventurer]

I run a web server and for me it's part time. The sites are mostly my own real-world businesses and when I need to add, oh say, something new in the hppd.conf throu SSH it takes me a lot of remembering, lots of reading and calls to friends. AND everyone is going to have a server they have to maintain? I used to be a full time developer, 6 months pass and I can't remember how too.... how is my friend who can barly figure out how to restart their PC keep a "home" server running? Anyway...... I am going to my google homepage to read some real news.

Re:home server....please

[b0s0z0ku]

I run a web server and for me it's part time. The sites are mostly my own real-world businesses and when I need to add, oh say, something new in the hppd.conf throu SSH it takes me a lot of remembering, lots of reading and calls to friends.

Use a GUI or web-based front-end to the text configuration files if you can set it up. Makes things a lot easier, and you can still edit the flat files if there's something that the front-end can't do.

-b.

It's not so crazy

[Jeff Molby]

Software as a service works because enough of the aspects of providing that software are a PITA. A decade from now, it's within reason that the software will be simple enough, the hardware will be cheap enough, and the bandwidth will be plentiful enough for the pendulum to swing back.

I predicted this 15 years ago

[maxcray]

I predicted this 15 years ago.

Predicting stuff that already happened

[MORB]

"Because in ten years, everything that could benefit from a microchip inside will have a microchip inside. And that means that were all going to own a lot of computers. Your television? A computer. Your cable/IPTV box? A computer. Your cell phone/messaging device? Also a computer. Bedside clock? You guessed it: Itll be a computer, too."

Those things have been computers since at least ten years.

Except alarm clock, because turning them into computers would be utterly pointless, so it didn't happen.
That all this junk would be networked has also been predicted a long time ago, and it just doesn't make sense.

Re:fucking Comcast

[b0s0z0ku]

hey, if this means that in 10 years I get to send mail from my house and not have it blocked due to a "policy blacklist"

Can't you relay it via an external (either Comcast's, or a mail-hosting company's where you have an account) mail server?

-b.

I agree

[conradov]

With every commenter... Never going to happen!

Or is everybody with a home PC going to acquire sysadmin knowledge? Server Backup? Power Backup?

Re:ARGH! Massive feature missing

[b0s0z0ku]

iWeb/photocasts/blogging/etc,

iWeb and their user interface is dreadful, IMHO. You're far better off with Google page creator (whatever it's called) or even regular web hosting and an ... ahem ... borrowed copy of DreamWeaver.

-b.

What? "software will be simple enough" is a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried vista and the new office? I think the trend is towards more complicated software. You really think a decade from now that M$ still won't be the major influence in the software that you use.

Bandwidth Costs

[nurb432]

Only problem is that many of us ( not me, thankfully ) have metered internet at home. This could seriously rasise your internet bill.

WHS screenshots

[westlake]

Products like Windows Home Server won't appeal to the masses, they'll see it as too hard.

Maybe. Maybe not. Server Install, Client Install & Configuration [April 18]

What about people...

[b0s0z0ku]

that don't have a fixed home or business location? Call them "road warriors". There'll always be a market for hosted applications, just because some people don't have the SPACE or time to host a server.

-b.

Latency

[marcosdumay]

Nuf said.

Big talk...

[alisson]

Might we start with everyone having a computer in their home in the next ten years?

pain in the ass wifi?

[nurb432]

My wifi hasn't burped once since i swtiched from a 'home router' to a old pc running some sort of linux or bsd distribution ( i finally settled on pfsence, since im a bsd guy and m0n0wall wasnt keeping up with technology, but the linux choices are just as good )

Google Apps more reliable than home servers

[hutchike]

From my experience, Google Apps is way more reliable than a home server - plus you can easily access your apps from home, work, vacation, etc. I run a home server at zicatela.net and have to call home when the cleaner "accidentally" unplugs it and I lose my site, iTunes, etc.

Personally I believe the distinction between client and server will blur in the future, and that projects such as Sun's Celeste will grow P2P services from today's server-centric approach.

10 years? How about today?

[the eric conspiracy]

So I'm living 10 years in the future I guess. I have a home server with a registered domain - I get email directly, serve my personal web content such as photo albums, program in alarms that wake me up in the morning via a distributed music system, backup the laptops I use throughout my house, cache DNS and automatically scarf data I need for managing my finances - stock quotes etc off the web.

A couple of things are a bit kludgey because I don't have a truly static IP; but that is not too far in the future. Really the only downside with that is I have to send my email out through my ISP's SMTP rather than directly.

The advantages over Google etc. are essentially unlimited space (I have 2 TB online right now) and very very fast access to the content, and I have control over the features of my setup. The disadvantage is setting up a reliable backup strategy takes some time and effort.

A year ago I used a hosting service for many of these features, but snce Cablevision made it's Boost service available with unblocked ports and dynamic DNS I moved everything to my home server.

We're not alone in the world

[hernyo]

Dear Glenn,

Currently over 3 billion people can not afford even a 300 Mhz second-hand desktop. What makes you think that in 10 years they will be able to buy fancy "Home Server"s? Now they're happy even without knowing what a computer is - why would they need "Home Server"s in 10 years??

Or does "everybody" cover only the top 10 countries??

Right. Because...

[rainer_d]

...backups are only for whimps.

I'll install a homeserver when
  - there's a reliable way to back it up
  - someone invents free energy
  - it's maintenance-free

Home server to for TV, movies, media

[cojsl]

Our home server is a small MCE box hooked to the TV for PVR, media storage and display, and sharing files and media that are accessed by (all laptop) clients around the house. No machines host any Internet available services, so security is less of a concern. It backs up to an inexpensive NAS box. We use an outside mail host, so availability of the server and Internet connection isn't as critical.

Open protocols to sync devices

[failedlogic]

If the writer is even correct, then I hope manufacturers come out with Open and common protocols to sync any device to any storage server. Example: iPod is dependent on iTunes to sync properly and get all the music uploaded to it, Palm Piolts need the Palm Desktop, a Blackberry needs special software as do many cell phones. Much of this proprietary software only runs on Windows (or really well on Windows) exception being the iPod.

I'm a Mac user. But its dawned on me how reliant devices are on Windows to sync up and upload/download your information. Cell phones will be a heck of a lot more common in the future. Shoudn't I be able to store my voicemails, text messages etc on my own computer rather than the carrier's networks quickly, easily and cheaply? I've looked at getting a Blackberry but, frankly, if it doens't work well on my Mac where all my business contacts are stored, I'm not about to start using Windows (and buy a new computer have a G5 so can't dual boot) just to use a Blackberry.

Re:Open protocols to sync devices

[simong]

The protocols are getting there, even to the point of phones working as mass storage devices with OS X (Sony Ericsson W810i - I almost cried with joy when I plugged it in and it just appeared on my desktop) so they will settle in the inevitable Betamax way...

Situation where Internet permitted, USB forbidden

[tepples]

I wonder what all these home appliances need so much cpu power+storage for that you need a central server? Can't you hook up these things with USB to your PC ? The following situation is the case for my little cousin: A boy's files are on a USB drive. But after the theft of a Nintendo DS video game system from a classmate's cubby hole earlier in the school year, students are prohibited from carrying a USB drive or any other electronic device to school. So how does the boy get the files from to the computer in his mom's house to the computer in his grandparent's house where he stays after school until his mom and step-dad get off work?

Won't happen.

[Urza9814]

Not while ISPs like Comcast get away with charging $60 to remove the 'you may not run a server' clause from their TOS. (I actually did call them to see how much that would cost. $40 a month for what I have, $100 a month for the EXACT SAME SERVICE but with servers allowed.)

Re:Won't happen.

[Paulrothrock]

The problem is that a server is any system that receives and replies to requests for information. So depending on what software you use, you're running a server even if you're just using a personal computer. Use BitTorrent to download a Linux ISO? Are you uploading data? Then you're a server.

I talked to several support monkeys at Comcast before I was escalated to someone with some knowledge. They told me (and I had them send me an email with a record of our conversation) that as long as I'm not hosting a full site or receiving a lot of email on my connection, they don't care if I'm using VNC or SSH or even HTTP on port 80.

Re:fucking Comcast

[mla_anderson]

I can do that now...just have to shop around for a good ISP

Half-assed job, so to speak

[alienmole]

Dude, the least you could have done was include a couple of search terms in that link!

Re:Half-assed job, so to speak

[LiquidCoooled]

I didn't think you lot would be interested in my dwarf porn searches.

Oh shit, did I just post that out loud?

*ahem*

[absurdist]

And you didn't make it available?

O RLY? Tell it to the ISPs / telecoms

[Gryffin]

Obviously this idiot doesn't have broadband access from a US telecom (DSL) or cable company. Every single one of them explicitly forbid any sort of "server", and enforce it by blocking nearly every port from 1-1024.

My ISP, OptimumOnline, is a great example; for years I've been getting around their blocks by using high ports and/or ssh tunneling, but just last month they essentially NATted the whole network -- I can't ssh to my home box, no matter what port; Hell, I can't even ping the thing.

Re:O RLY? Tell it to the ISPs / telecoms

[k3vlar]

It's complete and utter BS. My ISP, Telus, is a bit better than that, thankfully. After a few support calls, I was able to get to someone who knew something about their network config, and he listed the ports they were blocking. Their terms-of-use claims the ports are blocked to prevent viruses and botnets running off those ports, which is great for the average user, but I just wish they'd have some kind of opt-out option online for people who know what they're doing. Even having to call them and complain would be nice. Their business plan for ADSL which offers static IP addresses and no blocked ports is $67/mo. For their home connection with the same speeds and bandwidth limits its $32/mo. The only difference is unblocked ports and static IP addresses.

that's geeky.

[Anonymous Coward]

"And you really think Joe User is going to administer his own email server instead of using Gmail?"

Not if it's designed by geeks. Now if you'll excuse me, my VCR is flashing 12:00.

"It just takes unnecessary time and effort, especially for someone who just doesn't care about technology."

Technology that's intentionally designed to be user-hostile, but give a geek lifetime employment.

Re:that's geeky.

[styrotech]

So to give geeky VCR time setters lifetime employment, are you saying that VCRs clocks are made deliberately hard to change?

Subterranean cross-country trains

[alienmole]

When I need to get to Europe from New York, I take the subway to a special terminal that connects me to a train that shoots under the Atlantic at thousands of miles per hour in a vacuum.

That brings back memories: I saw a variation of this idea in an Encyclopaedia Britannica annual special edition book, which I think was from the late '70s. I just googled for it and found a description on this page:

Physicists told symposium attendees of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that trains consisting of 200 cars would rocket passengers across the country underground at speeds of up to 14,000mph. The "subway cars" would be large vacuum tubes and would ride a wave of magnetic fields in a manner similar to surfboards riding waves. The fare would be about $1 a minute (there would never be any delays) and one main line with two feeder lines was proposed - from New York to Los Angeles via Dallas, with feeder lines from Chicago and Cleveland. The trip from New York to Los Angeles was estimated at 54 minutes costing $54, running at about 6,000mph, such that people's weight would not increase at the higher speed.

There was only one stop in Dallas because the cars were supposed to accelerate continuously until they reached the point where they had to start braking for their next stop. If there were more stops, the trains couldn't have gone as fast without acceleration being uncomfortably high.

It would be kind of fun (for a while) to be able to commute from New York to LA...

Re:Situation where Internet permitted, USB forbidd

[rthille]

What an idiotic policy. What happens when someone swipes a jacket or a pair of shoes? Do the kids then have to come to school without shoes or a jacket?

Given that it's easy to get small flash drives free after rebate, the loss of a jacket could easily be more financially important than the flash drive.

Thin Clients need a Server

[ChromaticDragon]

Sheesh. I finally get mod points and find I'd rather reply..

The article is absolutely not what I thought it'd be. I am not in full agreement with the reasons stated. Let me instead share why I believe I'll head in this direction very soon.

A the moment, I do run a variety of web servers and my own mail server. but these are barely used. For reliability issues many others have stated, if I had any commercial need for reliability I probably wouldn't continue to host myself.

Over the years I have listened with bemusement as my coworkers and friends relate their horror stories of what children can do with computers. It seems a certainty that if you run Windows on a computer of any sort and you put a small child in front of it with an Internet connection, in a reasonably short period of time you will be required to reinstall Windows on that PC. Indeed, I put my daughter in front of a Linux box (running Gnome I think) to play education games and she managed to remove ALL the menus.

What I plan on doing when I next upgrade hardware is creating two PCs. One will be more tailored for Windows (if necessary for games, work, etc.) and another as a Home Server running Linux. The wife's aging PC behind me gets tossed. She and each child get a thin client instead. I hope to be able to use virtualization as necessary to pump Windows, if required for children's games, etc. If they still manage to toast the OS, it should be a (very) simple issue of copying an image to restore it.

Furthermore, it appears the best solutions for access-control and filtering involve a proxy-server. I want to be able to control this easily rather than depend on others' decisions of what should be blocked, and to be able to move gradually from strict white-listing to filtering and less restrictions as children age.

I do intend for the Home Server to pump music and video as well. But my primary reason has nothing to do with Media Center nor hosting apps. It's simply a desire to provide multiple terminals to the family with the least required maintenance of physical PCs and related OSs.

I'm very surprised this wasn't discussed more in the article.

I don't want to support it

[gelfling]

I don't want that job and I really don't want to fuck with slow network speeds to support my dumb heads on the network. I have a network file storage device now and anything less than Gig Ethernet is torture.

MS/OEMs will mess it up again

[theolein]

While Microsoft has been on this particular little bandwagon for a while now, with big plans for a "Vista Home Server" or something to that effect, and while HP et al may be clamouring for something where the margins and above all, sales will be thicker than the razor edges they now are (MS's margins on Win2K3 Server are enormous compared to WinXP/Vista), I'm pretty sure they'll mess it up and completely miss the boat just like they did with Windows Media Center, which, together with the poor Media Center PCs/Devices have only driven more people to Apple, where OSX along with a Mac Mini makes a really wonderful little home server for movies and sound, very easy to set up, and easy to maintain. This is what I have at home.

I had a Windows machine, but really, using Windows for basic media storage and media serving is, while easy for people who have a fair knowledge of Windows, not easy for average home users. Add to that the fact that WMC relied to a certain extent on small OEMs providing media in the way of TV and radio, and this failed across the board.

The Home Server market (for more than basic media and file serving) will be fun to watch. Who on earth is going to serve their apps (calendar,mail,media) across the net to themselves with their home broadband connection. How many ISPs will let that go before they upping the price to compensate for overloaded networks or blocking such services totally as many already do? How many pwned home servers will ther be if users today can't even stop their home machines from being used as bot nets?

And last but not least by a long way: When will Microsoft design server apps that are easy enough for home users to set up? I'm pretty sure Microsoft is doing this because Apple's OSX 10.5 Leopard will include calendar and media serving and will be, typically forApple, easy to use and problem free. It's just like the Zune, MSsmartphones and the XBox, Microsoft entering any and every market they possibly can because they are so incredibly terrified that they may wake up and find that no one wants their stuff anymore.

YES

[baomike]

>

Some will , and mine is sendmail.
The in house server is in preliminary design right now, ie "how do we want to do this".
The questions right now are "how big hard drives" and "what back up system".
The rest of the hardware is on hand except for UPS.

But where's my flying car?

[Franklin Brauner]

Is this really news yet?
--
Franklin Brauner

It all starts with a Domain Name and IPv6

[marsaro]

Hello;

there really is nothing to stop people from using servers in their home right now, other tan the setup and costs perhaps. Once you can have devices, and I do not just mean PC's, but a DSL modem, or a Cable Modem, equipped with an IPv6 address and attached to your own domain, home "servers" will take off. We are starting to see now that AOL and others are giving subscribers Domain Names, really to bring them back to their "home", the AOL network of services and not over at Google or Myspace.

All the technology exists right now, I see it just as a matter of time for the ease and critical mass to start whereby all homes will have devices that provide services to the people that live there, and when they are outside the home. Communication, like Email, VoIP, but also Blogs, Webstes, and "mystuff" like MP3s can be served up right now, at low to no cost other than the connectivity. There are dozens of ways to do this, but I see it as having to be compact, and easy to install and manage. If you grab the Free version of CommuniGate Pro (5 users) you have 90% of all the services you need, in one small package (30meg) Plus it supports IPv6 which if the USA even gets up to the technologies of Japan, we might all have a domain with dozens of devices that can be connected anyplace there is a network connection and start to see how the Internet was meant to be used.

Dollars per cubic centimeter

[tepples]

What an idiotic policy. Idiocy is typical of zero tolerance and other school policies, which tend to pander to the knee-jerk reactions of parents who vote for school board members. If the Internet routes around idiocy better than sneakernet does, then why use sneakernet?

What happens when someone swipes a jacket or a pair of shoes? As far as I can tell, the thinking is that a jacket or a pair of shoes is easier to recover from an elementary school age thief than a USB flash drive, USB hard drive, or Nintendo DS. In quantitative terms, their value in dollars per cubic centimeter is less than that of electronic equipment.

Cancel your subscriptions!

[CmdrPorno]

Panic! Shock! Terror! Cancel your Google accounts and your .Mac subscriptions NOW! Don't you know they'll be obsolete in ten years? While you're at it, throw away your cell phone, PDA, computer, printer, and clothes, because they'll be obsolete in ten years too.

And in related news...

[crath]

...IBM's Thomas J. Watson, predicts that "there is a world market for about five computers." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson

Physical separation

[mjsottile77]

I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone else mention this point. I have a little personal server here at home, but still plan to use remote server services like google or .mac simply because it makes me very uncomfortable to have all of my important data in one physical location. A fire, a flood, a thief - whatever the cause, having everything in one place makes me nervous. So, I like having an option for storing stuff that isn't colocated with me to cut the odds of important data being lost. This will always be a selling point for a remotely hosted server, regardless of how capable home solutions get.

Got a better one for ya...

[jagdish]

On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. - The Narrator

If so, it's a rip-off

[GunFodder]

That sounds just like Unix.

Re:If so, it's a rip-off

[erikdalen]

First, it's made by the same people. So then they're ripping off themselves.

Second, lots of stuff in unix aren't files. look at tcpip for example. And plan 9 can have per-process mount tables, so you can make much more use of the files.

I might be challenging Google's Authori-tay

[photomonkey]

But I just don't see Google as being able to prevent their current tools (or at least most of them, anyway) from turning into crappy ad-driven bloatware over the next decade. Look at their search engine. It's not nearly as good at filtering the ads as it once was, and part of me suspects they like it that way.

I have a server at home. RAID-5 and over 1.5TB of storage. I still use Google. You know why? Because even though I don't think their search engine is as good as it could be, I'm not talented enough to write a better one, and then install and maintain it on my server.

An extraordinary number of folks won't have a giant 'computer-cop' in their house to handle all their appliances. People inherently want things to be simple and easy; especially those who are not power users. In the next 10 years, the only thing that's going to happen is that companies like Google, for as good as they are, will have to avoid dot-bombing, while keeping their products fresh, interesting and, well, in demand.

As to .Mac, does anyone actually use .Mac?

Well done

[Anonymous Coward]

Well done.
I had the same thoughts, but you executed it much much better than I ever would have.

I salute you.

The Situation in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

Re the British 'brain drain': yes, Thatcher reversed that... but Blair has reversed it again, with emigration from Britain reaching record levels in recent years.

Almost every friend who has a high-paid job and useful skills is looking at emigrating from Britain, waiting for their visa, or has already gone, and I'll be off across the Atlantic myself in a couple of months. I'd add that includes skilled and integrated Muslim friends who have no more desire to stay here than I do; many saw the writing on the wall with the London bombings and I'd hate to see them getting hurt in a backlash against Muslim extremists.

Someone mentioned that one reason people aren't willing to fight for Britain is because it doesn't exist anymore, and I'd agree with that; the Britain of 2007 bears little resemblance to the country where I grew up, and almost anything a Briton of 1907 might recognize here has been destroyed by a few decades of 'progressive' policies which deliberately set out to do exactly that. Britons fifty years ago were happy to fight for King and Country -- as I would have been myself -- but few people today are going to fight for Tony Blair and the EU.

It's no wonder to me that so many would rather abandon the country to its fate in the hope of building something better elsewhere than stay and face generations of work to rebuild what we had not so long ago. I honestly think the wreckers are far too entrenched in every institution in the country for anyone to turn them around through democratic means in less than a couple of generations; even Thatcher's attempts to do so were wiped out in a few years of Blair's government.

So, as I see it, the future for Britain is either Islamic rule or civil war, with the latter more likely. Since I don't fancy either of those options, I'd rather make a stand in a country that still has more options; as mentioned above, while an Islamic Europe would certainly bode poorly for America, don't underestimate the benefits of having a wide ocean on each side. If America and Canada close their doors to Muslim extremists, they're not going to be walking or paddling rafts across the Atlantic (on the other hand, they might fly to Mexico and walk across the border).

Centralized servers?

[StarkRG]

How long before we move back to centralized servers? Where everyone's home computer is simply a thin client and there are several central servers which store all the programs and all your information (securely, of course)? All programs would be sold as services (which, to anyone who's read The Cathedral And The Bazaar knows is good for programmers and for customers). It would almost completely remove the need for portable storage (though I still think carrying around little spheres that contain petabytes of information would be cool). Downloads would be instantaneous since instead of just copying the file from one computer to the next you'd just be making a link to a file stored elsewhere on the server. There would be several servers around the globe to help relieve bandwidth issues. I would say that the servers would periodically update each other so they all contained the same information and would be connected as a true mesh topology so that if one went down your computing experience would be only slightly disrupted and slowed. No need to upgrade your computer any more, when things needed to be faster, have more storage or memory, the servers would be upgraded. If the thin clients needed to be updated they'd send you (or bring you and install) a new one since it's all just a service and you don't actually own the product, and because all software is a service you'd always have the latest version. You own all your information, obviously, and there'd have to be laws and such to protect that, nearly unbreakable encryption using a password (which would be the weakest link in the chain, as it should be).

Preferably there'd be more than one company to buy your service from, they'd all have the same information and be connected to the same network, but, like cell phones, would provide different extra services. Perhaps some of the options would be different underlying operating systems which really shouldn't make that much of a difference to the end user since all operating systems would have to be able to run the same software, but perhaps the operating systems might provide different features that are useful for different applications. You'd have your choice of window managers which could either be a choice at log in, or you pay for them with your service, meaning you choose one and you're stuck with it unless you want to pay more (this is more likely).

Obviously this wouldn't eliminate the need for commercial or open source products (or services, in this case), in fact, this might be something that a competitor would provide: cheaper service with open sourced, community made window managers and software. You'd still be able to get the commercial software if you absolutely needed it.

Your internet access, TV, phones(?), radio, etc. would all come on one bill. TV networks would be providing something similar to the software companies. You pay for the service provided by the TV networks and software companies, and you get access to all they have to offer (with the possibility of different packages). TV and radio would no longer need to be streaming information, you could pick and choose what program you wanted when.

In order to get radio into cars the internet would have to be a wireless one covering the globe, possibly with satellites getting to the places the cells can't (for whatever reason). This would also mean that there could be free-to-air services with advertising (or donation based PBS type networks). This would not be restricted to TV and Radio either, there could be advertising based free-to-use software (which could possibly include storage).

Since all the servers would have the same information whenever you logged in from anywhere else in the world your desktop would pop up, just as you left it at home, almost instantly. There could be roaming charges like cell phones if the company you pay is not available in the area you are.

There would have to be no restriction on who could provide a server. There could be provisions in the software to allow a server without e

WEP?

[sheldon]

I abandoned WEP like 3 years ago. Use WPA instead, and it's a breeze to configure and use.

I'm fine with DIY, if it works well. What I can't stand is spending 12 hours trying to get my frickin video card working with my HDTV set.

Home, work, friend's house?

[hardgeus]

And how is your magic server going to allow you to instantly grab your cool file when you're at work or at your friend's house? People don't understand their own filesystem as it is ( http://www.hardgeus.com/index.php?ndailyupdateid=7 23 ), much less a fileserver on their own network.

As home PCs get fatter, the web gets easier to use. The fat client is dying, and the fatter "media center" to organize those fat clients is a ridiculous dream.

Done it, now I'm moving on

[Anonymous Coward]

If anything, I would say he's got it completely backwards. For years I ran Apache, PHP, MySQL, Wordpress, qmail, and djbdns from my home. It was a pain in the ass. Not so much the sys admin part, once you get the servers setup they're generally good for awhile, especially qmail and djbdns. The problem is with all the other crap. Electrical outages, DSL outages, spam filtering, and occasional issues with reverse DNS. It's my understanding that you need two IP addresses to run your own primary DNS, which I didn't have. So my ISP's DNS servers were primary but they synced to my info. My reverse DNS never did work properly. I hated feeling like I could never shutdown my server because I was going to lose email. I hated it so I moved on a year ago to Yahoo's Small Business product. It provides everything I used to have and I don't have to work on it as much. I felt like I was pissing my life away administering those servers. Anyway, long story even longer, now I'm wondering if the Yahoo product is really worth the $12 a month. In the end, the thing I like best is having email at my own domain so that I don't have to have an email address like joe09453598w458934598635543645634563456345634563@a ol.com. But now you can get that with Google apps for $10 a year. I think I might switch.

Regarding the Apple .Mac product, I haven't used it even though we now have a couple of Macs, but it looks way too expensive for what you get. A tiny amount of storage and no option to have your own domain name. If they would change those two parts, I might consider it. Especially since I don't care for the two registrars Google has partnered with, GoDaddy and eNom.

Bad Predictions

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because the cost of something is dropping doesn't mean it will move from the business world to the home. If that were true you could have said that by 1995 all homes would have their own mainframe room. Not saying this won't happen but I'm tired of reading about predictions based on shallow assumptions.

No to web/mail server yes to media server

[mrraven]

I think you are right for everything except file serving, especially music files. I just set up an ssh tunnel to slimserver on my home OS X box and I think I'm really going to enjoy having remote access to ALL my music. I have over 100 gigs of music so no it won't fit on my ipod. OTH running my own web or mail server is way too much hassle for the benefit derived

Re:No to web/mail server yes to media server

[ScrewMaster]

Well, I agree that running a Web server on a home box is pretty pointless (unless that site has some direct impact on your home, say a remote X10 controller or something like that) but there really isn't much "hassle" involved in running a mail server. I mean, it's about one of the most basic Internet services out there, and there's tons of good software. I run my own because I prefer to have my communications stored on media that is firmly under my control. I don't even run outgoing SMTP through my ISP's server (whose track record on privacy isn't particularly good anyway) and the outfit that hosts my domains allows me to alter their MX records to point directly to my own system. Performance is substantially better that way (no more polling) and people are often surprised that I receive their messages within a second or less of their clicking "Send".

.mac is history...

[MsGeek]

...unless Apple starts giving it away. Seriously. Between Google apps and XDrive I have everything .mac has for FREE. Even the zealots will come around.

Oh yeah, home servers, unless they are exposed to the Internet, do not give you the ability to access your data from anywhere there's connectivity. I dread to think what would happen in an Internet where you have home servers everywhere. Particularly home servers running WINDOWS. The only folks who would be happy in a situation like that would be Russian pr0n spammers.

Heh

[lewp]

My "personal server" isn't going to be displacing Google until I can get more than 2MB upstream to my house.

Off Topic - Blackberry & the Mac

[wilko11]

Hi, Have you looked at this: http://www.pocketmac.net/products/pmblackberry/ ? It is now a free download. It claims to fully support both Entourage and the native Mac apps (Address Book, iCal etc), Apologies if you have tried it and found it wanting. Paul

Re:Off Topic - Blackberry & the Mac

[failedlogic]

I've looked at some reviews of it. Not being a Blackberry owner, I've no means to test it. But many reviwers find it lacking. Shame because having a combo PIM, GPS device and Phone all in one (with the 8800) would be great esp with the integrated keyboard. And would save me some pocket space.

Incomplete, anyway

[abb3w]

Others have noted two reasons your prediction about home servers is flawed: the wildly optimistic assumption you make that because reduced technical need for IP space restrictions implies ISPs' will be more tolerant in an IPv6 environment, and disaster preparedness advantages of such central services. I also suggest another reason: security.

NAT serves two functions: as an IP space multiplier, and as a firewall. Until servers for such functions become sufficiently hardened against attack and security compromise as to make such unheard of, or until firewall technology leaps far ahead of the system perversion experts with a simultaneous price drop and usability improvements to suit the home user, most people won't want all the gizmos on their home LAN to be exposing bare silicon to the internet.

(Your position also assumes everyone will want to get their own DNS name, but that at least might be plausible.)

that's status quo.

[Anonymous Coward]

My point with the VCR comment is that technology changes. VCR's were hard to set because the technolgy wasn't up to it at the time. I could have given channel numbers as an example for those who remember that far back. Now we have PLLs and atomic clocks (the Boulder Colorado kind) to set our time. And yes I do feel that change is resisted because to do otherwise would lessen the need for the "geek" status quo.

Google will just sell servers

[joetyson]

Google already sells search servers.. If that becomes the situation, they will come out with file servers for home use.

It's called Windows Live (eventually)

[notaprguy]

But seriously, from what I can tell, the real and fairly cool vision of Windows Live is to allow for easy and seamless sync of data between PC's (and Mac's), phones, others personal devices - delivering the data in a format appropriate for the device/form factor. I personally have a home server already but would be more than happy to get rid of it if I could pay someone else a few bucks a month to deal with it for me and deal with the various sync issues that I don't want to have to deal with manually. I think this is what Ray Ozzie envisions with Windows Live. We'll see if they actually deliver. Hope so.

When home server sysadmins are robots maybe

[grikdog]

I think people consistently misgrok the consumer. Nobody wants to be a thin client on somebody else's server (same reason "mass transit" is an oxymoron), everyone wants their own computer to do a 3% subset of the things computers can do, and they want it to work now, work tomorrow and work yesterday without ever, EVER, thinking. So... home servers? Maybe. When designers stop thinking about details and start selling cooperative little black boxes, yeah, maybe. Like with cars, you sell "rack and pinion steering" to Linux geeks, and "rich corinthian leather" to Mac users, and "extended cab pickups" to Windows people, but NOBODY sells the console anymore, except for a few steampunk clowns who like to emulate Kaypro 10's at 300 times Kaypro speed. It's curious that you can't package the 3%, though. Everyone wants a different genie in the bottle at 10 a.m. and then at 10 p.m. I think the only answer is a virtual robot -- but distributed throughout the entire house, while the interface, the focus, is a virtual actor on your HD tv screen. Lucy Liu does housework, sort of thing. With style.

Alternatively -

[Geminii]

As wireless networking gets cheaper and cheaper, every bog-standard retail whitebox includes a wireless chip. Microsoft buys out a small software company which made redundancy solutions and turns their product into Microsoft Mirror, included and running by default on all Windows installs. It takes up three gigabytes, of which most is GUI, language packs and little photorealistic animations. The software takes all the data entered on each computer and backs it up on the other computers in the home, effectively turning each PC and laptop into a terminal server linked to a cluster which it also runs one node of. They then have to release a patch to fix problems where neighbours' networks and therefore personal data auto-merge into a single network grid, bringing all bandwith to a screaming halt as consumers' machines try to mirror the data of 199 other accounts in the highrise. And their version 2 includes encryption of the data so that the schmucks who sell their old PC or laptop on Ebay aren't auto-including a copy of all their personal data. They never do anything about the time-since-last-synch problem, other than pop up a generic error which most users close without reading, and which doesn't identify the source of the problem anyway. (Bad wireless chip? Busted driver? Out of range?) This makes people believe that their computers are mysteriously reverting to old versions of data and/or losing stuff they worked on yesterday. Tech support personnel cry themselves to sleep every night. Various bored programmers take a day to knock out linux versions, which consist of 10K of scripts - half of which is documentation. The configuration has to be manually tweaked for each machine, but otherwise It Just Works. Assuming you have the prerequisite scripting packages installed and up to date, of course. In the meantime, Google releases a beta search which can find your spectacles, car keys, children, rich uncle's will, and tickets to that really cool sold-out event. The search code can be downloaded as an add-on for Internet Explorer, where the timer animation is replaced by a series of chairs being thrown across the screen.

You must be joking

[Heembo]

Most home users can not even manage their computer, now you expect them to be able to install, configure and administer a home server? Not bloody likely!

Logical

[pubwvj]

We have had an internal home server for since the early 1990's. I don't trust to to have our server needs fulfilled by some outside source for security reasons and the DSL pipe is really too small to waste bandwidth on this. Our internal network is orders of magnitude faster and more secure. I've never thought much of Apple's .Mac or other similar systems. Why would I ever trust them with my data when we read of almost daily security breaches, even at the departments of Homeland Security is losing people's data left and right. See this article.

Why do you think that?

[Snaller]

For *real* mail I use pop3, which I check from a safe environment (ie not netcafes or unsecured computers), gmail is scratch mail and suffices - I don't see why i should have to set up a mail server - waste of time (and a new target for hackers)

Oh no!

[Snaller]

Having to play games on shitty little portable is such a terrible burden - I hope the desktop pc never goes out :(

And bandwith prices go up? I'm sure you are right, they are already obscenely expensive for what it actually costs to deliever it (very little)

Bandwith should be free like roads (ie, tax supported)

And of course

[Snaller]

""The one next to which key?"
"The one.""

That's only on american keyboards. For most of the rest of the world you have to press a combination of several keys at the same time (which it seems damn jingositic of Quake/wikipedia/etc always to use that damn key which is so bloody hard to press)

That's not what I heard

[Captain Tripps]

I thought it was NYC to San Francisco, and only for burritos.

Most people don't want to roll their own.

[MikeFM]

It's a pretty well known fact that most people would rather use an out-of-the-box solution than try to do things themselves. I can see some businesses running their own servers and some geeky people like us but the vast majority of people would rather have a system managed by someone else on a network managed by someone else. No matter how easy doing it yourself is it's still almost always easier to let someone else do it. Only people that need solutions to problems not yet covered by a service company will probably want to do things themselves. Them and us geeks that like doing things ourselves just because. :)

Of course it's much more price effective for a central company to adminstrate lots of servers/apps than for lots of individuals to do so. My company just switched most of our servers to running as virtual machines on a single physical machine - much better use of hardware and easier to manage. Also improving things by having a couple people that know what we're doing manage the network and servers instead of letting a lot of people that don't know what they're doing do it. Overall, things are much more reliable and we expect to save a lot of money over time with this strategy. The same strategy applies to a single company managing services for others - in fact we're considering, since we have far more experience and infrastructure in our company than most other companies in our area, offering hosting and management of systems for other companies.

I think it'll be an interesting battle as companies try to battle it out to become your application server of choice, for different apps, while still trying to stick to the free or almost free price range.

Yes! And everyone will run their own power plant!

[csoto]

Because they're cheap now. No, they're not complicated, and I want to run everything myself because I have all that extra time.

There's a value in services. Particularly, the value of not having to do everything oneself. I gladly pay for someone else to care for my data, for example. .Mac has paid for itself for several years, just by backing up my wife's dissertation docs when a disk failure borked her laptop.

cooperative hosting?

[Herve5]

The best I know -for trust, not reliability- are cooperative webhosts; alas they often only provide PHP/mySQL but not root access. I'm still searching a cooperative virtual hosting...

Hervé

Confused

[ficken]

I fail to see what .Mac and Google apps have to do with this. With devices such as iPhone (it integrates with .Mac according to the rumours - and I have no doubts that Google will be offering some service/product of value to this market) you can still have your centralized home server and a need for those services.

Propaganda

[BIGELLOW]

I have a home server. I also use Google Apps. If it is assumed that Google Apps is only for those who don't have the capacity to keep a computer at home on 24/7, then it ignores the fact that corporations that have many servers are also switching to Google Apps. The fact of the matter is, email servers have problems... computers have problems... new security holes are found... new security patches are released... new security patches introduce new problems. On top of this, computers in general have problems. The power can go out. Etc, etc, etc...

Google has a bunch of data centers distributed throughout the world. Each has generators for power backup, redundant servers, high bandwidth, etc, etc, etc... They take care of keeping up-to-date with security problems and glitches in the system. And, on top of this, they continually update the software/services with new features.

People switch to Google Apps not because they don't have the capacity to be admins, but because they are tired of being admins. They are essentially hiring Google (for free) to be the admin for them. As for the paid-version of Google Apps, the only benefit is for companies with an existing Intranet that wishes to tightly integrate their Intranet with Google Apps. Otherwise, everyone should just be using the free version.

I could run my own email server at home, but I don't want to have to deal with making sure I (and nobody else) can connect to my email server if I am away from home. I also don't want to have to deal with long term power outages and expanding hard drive space, or hard drives that slowly start to die and need replacement. The only "problem" solved by putting a server in one's home is by having a single source of truth for all of your shared information, such as MP3s, photos, videos, etc... The problem with this is if you want 24/7 access to this information from inside AND from outside of your home, then you run into the problems mentioned before. As Google rolls out more and more hosted applications and services (say, for instance, a hosted virtual drive... maybe a repository for your personal music... etc...), Google becomes a much more enticing option than using the home server. If you stay in your home 24/7 or are only concerned about accessing your stuff while within your home, then using a home server and something like Open Office is probably a better bet. But, these days, everything is about portability... and I think this will only continue to become more true as we delve further into the future.