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Web OS, ajaxWindows Launched
BigRedFed writes "Michael Robertson, of mp3.com fame, Linspire.com fame (or infamy depending on your view point) and more recently, ajax13.com has released another interesting piece of web software. ajaxWindows they are calling it and it's an almost full fledged web based OS that you can use to transport around your documents and mp3 collection to any device with an internet connection and a full web-browser."
I think I can smell the servers burning from here...
I stole this sig from a more creative user.
Zero comments and the site is already reporting 404 error, makes you wonder how scalable it is...
Looks like the OS already crashed.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
"He's dead already, Jim."
... I would have liked to have taken a look at it first before commenting on it.
And that's too bad
Guess I'll just start commenting anyway.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
No problem with AjaxWindows. I don't see a lawsuit coming at all! (If Lindows causes a lawsuit, then AjaxWindows (combining the power of TWO trademarked names) should solve the problem!)
Which is precisely what Robertson wants - Microsoft ended up paying Lindows $20 million because they were about to lose their clearly generic "Windows" trademark.
They'll pull out the checkbook and pay him off again, or ignore it and hope it goes away on its own. The last thing they want is for this to go to court again.
So... um... where's the interrupt dispatcher at? Come to think of it, what about the IO handler or CPU scheduler?
My web-based OS has crashed with an error "404 not found" and since the screen is not blue, I don't know how I should approach this! Can you please reboot the internet for me?
:-)
Thanks in advance!
Accessing my mp3s and documents over the web has been a dream up to now.
That's funny, I have no trouble at all accessing your documents...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I think it would be better to describe it as a "web desktop" and not a "web OS". There are plenty of "desktops" available on the web.
Web OS, now THAT is a great oxymoron.
He got slashdotted and now makes it seem like they planed the outage.
"Thank you for visiting ajaxwindows.com
ajaxWindows and the Ajax13 web site are temporarily down for planned
maintenance. We expect to be back up by 2:30pm, PDT on 9/10/07
Thanks for your interest, please visit our site again, soon."
string sig = llGetSig("dimentox"); llSay(0,sig);
Yeah, another "Web OS"! Now with more marketing!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Oh, ya think?
Damn, I love this guy. Who else would do something like this? Bear in mind, this is the guy whom Microsoft sued for using the name Lindows, and ends up getting paid $20 million. Oh, and the RIAA? While others end up paying the record labels thousands for petty downloading, Michael Robertson founds MP3.com, commercializes file sharing, and gets paid hundreds of millions and then goes on to take that money to start Lindows, which, of course, lays the foundation for another pay day. And all of it using open source software.
So when Michael Robertson says that he is ready, I interpret this to mean that he is getting ready for another pay day at Microsoft's expense. LOL, party at Michael's house!
Gates: You got your Javascript in my Windows!
Web2.0: You got your Windows in my Javascript!
Your USB stick is easier to use and faster. But behold! My block of swiss cheese has a stronger security model!
returned '1'
according to the video it's already integrated with most of google's web apps. It's only a matter of time until they buy it out. Hopefully they will put it on some better servers as well
Yeah, wait til I slap a XSS bug on yer ass! Or what about the unpatched vulns?
I'M IN UR OS, STEALIN' UR WEBZ!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
So I get a computer, then I load a OS, then I need a Web Browser, and I need to get a Internet Connection, THEN I can connect to a Web Service that provides me with ANOTHER desktop so that I can store stuff. Wow, compared to a $30 dollar thumb drive, that IS convenient.
Uhh...
Didn't Microsoft BUY the Lindows trademark, for whatever reason?
Man, that wily Gates! He sure knows how to piss someone off by throwing money at them!
If "shit" = $20 million, I'd like some shit, too.
I checked out the MP3.com bankruptcy auction a few years back. The stuff they had in there was a mind-blowing waste of money. Tons of the best new equipment, hideously expensive (and ugly) interior decorating including an honest to god bordello for visiting musicians. In one of the oak-paneled developer conference rooms with 360-degree white boards and projectors and other gadgets galore, somebody had written the note: "Robertson + $$ = stupidity"
I'm sitting at a Sun Ultra 40 running Windows XP 64-bit edition. 4 CPU cores. 8GB RAM. NVIDIA QuadroFX 3450 graphics. I'm on a gigabit connection to a major internet link (major financial news and data company). Even so, ajaxWindows recreates that, sticky, gummy, nasty feeling of running X-Windows when the machine isn't really powerful enough and dragging solid windows around is still a reckless waste of horsepower.
The early 90s called, they want their SPARCstation 5s back.
This sucks worse than most similar sites I've looked at.
The server running slowly showed up some serious cracks in their design. First off, they're calling this AJAX? It _pauses_ while downloading stuff. Some core code is _not_ asynchronous.
There are a number of problems with the user interface. At one point I was prompted with a browser window about trusting the site without any comment that this would happen. When I said I didn't trust it, I ended up with a box on the screen that obscured other windows, even when they were supposedly in front of it in z-order. Assuming the content would have been implemented with Java, I don't see how this is ever going to be different, even if I had decided to trust it (Java applet components cannot have HTML-rendered components in front of them; basic browser limitation).
When I told it to add a new application, it crashed. No components worked.
Many elements of the user interface are blatant ripoffs of other people's designs. The add applications dialog uses an almost identical layout and icon set to Microsoft's similar control panel application in Windows. The icon for their "synchronize" application is a direct rip-off of Palm's HotSync icon.
And finally, when I closed the desktop window, it crashed Firefox. I couldn't switch tabs, and couldn't set the focus to any controls. I had to kill it and restart to post this message.
Well my USB drive has a rootkit built in!
First post! (just in case I am...)
I could swear that is something the wife told me to do whilst Ajaxing the Bathroom, and Toilet... Surely they could come up with a better name like...Windex or something like that
Let the flames begin!
Sorry, couldn't help it.
when I selected the option to logout, I saw a confirmation dialog: do you want to continue? Yes. Cancel.
So I guessed that 'Yes' meant that I want to 'continue' loging out.
Anyway, for me in FF 1.5 the right click on the 'desktop' showed to menues at the same time: on the bottom there was this 'os' context menu and on the top there was FF context menu and I could only chose items in the FF context menu.
The windows are slow. The widgets did not execute (some error.) The 'console' didn't open (maybe for IE it will, I don't know.) What is the point of all of this?
You can't handle the truth.
IANAL, but here is what I read in their "http://www.ajaxwindows.com/en/privacy.jspprivacy policy":
[snip]
Second, we collect personal and personally identifiable information such as your name, email address, physical address, telephone number, credit card number and information concerning software downloaded, products and content purchased, accessed and/or downloaded through our products and services.
[/snip]
[snip]
Choice/Opt-Out Back to top
We do not disclose an individual customer's personally identifiable information to third parties for third-party direct marketing purposes if we have received and processed a request from that customer not to have his or her personal information shared for this purpose. You may submit this type of opt-out request by sending an email to: information@Ajax13.com with the words "Opt Out" in the subject line, or to the following mailing address: Customer Service, Ajax13, Inc., 5960 Cornerstone Court West, Suite 100, San Diego, CA 92121. In addition, we also allow you to decide whether you want to receive further marketing information from us. If you do not want Ajax13 to send to you announcements or special offers by email, please email us in the same manner as described above with the word "Remove" in the subject line. Please allow up to two weeks for your request to be processed.
[/snip]
Looks like they can sell your info to spammers unless you opt-out. If you wan't to try them out, do not give them your "good" email address.
Mp3.com was probably one of the best music sites around at the time for unsigned or self promoting artists. In fact to this day I've seen nothing nearly as good or diverse. The music scandal was the online storage they where trying to offer, which I didn't pay much attention to because I was there for the new music. AFAIR they where supposed to be allowing you "storage" for your existing CD's. I don't now how it worked or if there was any verification method but I don't honestly think it's such a bad idea. Now he has a product called MP3tunes that shares the same goal. Online storage/backup/accessibility of your music collection. But now you have to upload the individual tracks (using the Oboe program to sync). It's good and I use it, but it's a lot of time and bandwidth uploading tracks that are often going to be exact duplicates of files already on their system so I can see how his original idea could have seemed appealing (to both the end-user, their ISP and the service).
But I do miss the days of surfing Mp3.com for new music and the artists I met and discovered there. It was a pretty good music community. Nothing like MySpace or anything else out there today.
Quack, quack.
Lots of people bash Michael Robertson for one thing or another, but I completely agree with you -- he and his Linspire team have done a good job of preparing a GNU/Linux distro for the mainstream.
One of the biggest contributions that Michael Robertson made to the Free Software community (yes, that means all of us, including Eric S. Raymond) is that he envisioned a commercial distro which would be palatable to North Americans. I have traveled to 3 continents and five nations to shoot filmed interviews for a documentary that I am making about how FOSS is changing culture, and I can tell you that there are HUGE differences in the way that people perceive FOSS.
In Brazil and other places in South America, people are more likely to resonate with the libertad of "Free Software." In North America and Europe, people are more likely to talk about how wonderful it is that "open source" is creating so many new opportunities to create wealth.
The differences are differences of culture.
Michael Robertson's message resonates with consumers who are sick and tired of the high cost of Apple, and Microsoft's dirty tricks, high cost, and malware. But many of his best customers don't care about Freedom in cycberspace. At least not yet. And maybe then never will. But they sure do love the convenience of CNR, Linspire's implementation of the Debian pool. But maybe one day they will finally "get" it that low cost and convenience are best obtained where there is freedom in cyberspace and true competition on the desktop. And Michael Robertson will have contributed to these consumers' support for a FOSS market.
I tend to be more of a "Free Software" guy than an "open source" guy. And yet I am very grateful for Michael Robertson's work, because he is helping us build a larger, more populous, and more diverse FOSS community.
Christian Einfeldt,
Producer, The Digital Tipping Point
My "computer" has been slashdotted!
No thanks.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
I completely agree with what you are saying, and I would take it one step further. IMHO, Michael Robertson is doing as much as Richard Stallman, Steve Weber, The Pirate Bay and maybe even Che Guevara to redefine the nature of property. Each of these four guys / entities has done something to help us envision or experience "intellectual property" in a radical new way.
Richard Stallman formalized the idea of "Free Software." Steve Weber gave Free Software a new name, calling it an "anti-rival" resource, meaning a resource that increases in supply as it is consumed. The Pirate Bay and Che Guevara both thumbed their nose at western notions of capital accumulation. Michael Roberston has commercialized the delivery of "anti-rival resources.
Of course, lots of people would say that I am nuts to compare these four guys. Che killed people. The Pirate Bay is regarded by many as organized international theft. Richard Stallman has never held a gun in his life, probably, and has a low opinion of combining Free Software with non-Free Software, which is the mainstay of Robertson's business. And Michael Robertson considers himself a gung-ho capitalist. Steve Weber is a political science professor at one of the premier universities in the world, he drives a sexy black Saab, and he is no enemy of free market capitalism. So of course there are huge differences between all of these guys.
But if you look carefully at their lives, I think you will see that each of these people has played a remarkable role in changing the way that we think of property. My point in comparing and contrasting them is to point out that Michael Robertson deserves respect for fundamentally re-imagining the role of "intellectual property", maybe even as much as Richard Stallman, but just in a more commercial way. And yet even Richard advocates selling "Free Software." In 15 years, Michael Robertson will be thought of as one of the stars of the Free Software revolution.
Finally, don't think of Michael Robertson as an intellectual slouch. He completely understands the theories of Steve Weber, Richard Stallman, and Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christensen. In fact, one of the things that impresses me most about Robertson is his ability to boil very complex ideas down into really simple, straightforward statements and businesses.
It's slow as hell, doesn't do anything my local desktop doesn't do already, and the interface is horrible. Other than that it's fine.
The problem with web desktops is that these guys aren't asking the question, "What problem do people have that we can solve using Javascript?" They're asking, "How cool would it be if we could make a desktop on the web?!" It's a solution looking for a problem.
This sort of thing could be REALLY useful, but not by emulating desktops. I'm never in the position where I say, "Hey, I wish I could click on desktop icons remotely." Emulating vi or emacs in Javascript, however, kicks ass, because I *always* want vi keybindings in browser text areas, and making quick changes to web sites with a decent editor in Javascript would mean I could skip the "upload the changes via ftp" step that cheap web hosts make you go through.
I also don't know why the people who write these things can't implement a "window" with a border properly so that the border doesn't lag horribly behind the window content when you drag it. Use a div, and make it draggable. Put the content inside. Then make your empty window div a Javascript prototype so that Javascript applications can subclass it. Don't worry about shiny gradients until I can drag a window without it falling apart.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.