Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

One Computer to Rule Them All

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the and-in-the-queue-bind-them dept.

An anonymous reader writes "IBM has published a research paper describing an initiative called Project Kittyhawk, aimed at building "a global-scale shared computer capable of hosting the entire Internet as an application." Nicholas Carr describes the paper with the words "Forget Thomas Watson's apocryphal remark that the world may need only five computers. Maybe it needs just one." Here is the original paper."

11 of 288 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah, right... by Yetihehe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not gonna happen. One computer - one organization as the power. Does all corporations use gmail? No. The ssame with OSCPW (One Super Computer Per World).

    --
    Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
    1. Re:Yeah, right... by yiantsbro · · Score: 5, Funny

      I've seen this movie--and both sequels. It doesn't work out so well for us humans in the end.

    2. Re:Yeah, right... by MoralHazard · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If you'd bothered to even finish reading the summary (let alone the article), you would have noticed the key word: SHARED. Nobody's talking about hosting this all on one physical computer any more than Gmail is hosted on one physical computer. Both setups are distributed clusters of smaller computers.

      At which point you start to see were IBM's idea actually make sense--they are talking about building a worldwide, distributed, networked collection of cooperating computers... HEY, that sounds an awful lot like the Internet!!

      (I swear, the comment quality on Slashdot gets more and more like YouTube every day.)

  2. Hosting the entire internet? by dreamchaser · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Huh? The Internet is not an application. It's just a big network. Sounds like marketing speak to me.

    Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of Internets! Bah.

  3. Hello Multivac! by Megane · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Maybe Asimov was right after all?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivac

    --
    #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
  4. One OS to rule them all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, paid me a visit. As we were talking I mentioned that I had recently installed Windows on my PC, I told him how happy I was with this operating system and showed him the Windows CD. To my astonishment and distress he threw it into my micro-wave oven and turned it on. I was upset because the CD had become precious to me, but he said: 'Do not worry, it is unharmed.' After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said: 'Take a close look at it.' To my surprise the CD was quite cold and it seemed to have become thicker and heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole I saw an inscription, in lines finer than anything I have ever seen before. The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:

    4F6E65204F5320746F2072756C65207468656D20616C6C2C204F6E65204F5320746F 2066696E64207468656D2C0D0A4F6E65204F5320746F206272696E67207468656D20 616C6C20616E6420696E20746865206461726B6E6573732062696E64207468656D

    'I cannot read the fiery letters,' I said.

    'No,' he said, 'but I can. The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says:'

    One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
    One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

  5. Re:Yeah, right... Indeed by cytg.net · · Score: 5, Funny

    And just for that very same reason, i suggest we implement a kill switch ..
    a kill switch like..hmm..how about : whatcouldpossiblegowrong ??
    agreed then. Thank you for participating.

  6. And the answer is... (no spoilers. ) by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... Well, I don't have the creativity to write something this nice, and certainly I don't have the right to spoil it. Check out one of the most enjoyable short stories written by Aasimov

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  7. Phython! by bunratty · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm glad they're forward-looking enough to implement Phython, the best of PHP and Python in one language. Maybe next year they can implement Pherlthon?

    --
    What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
  8. Re:Good idea by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Putting all of your eggs in one basket always seemed like a good idea... Oh, I'm sure a massive supercomputer design from a company with the large-scale computing experience of IBM would be far from putting all your eggs in one basket. Have you ever worked on IBM mainframe equipment? This stuff has redundancies up the wazoo -- everything from multiple redundant power paths to multiple redundant CPUs and mainboards. You know how everyone brags about Linux servers have "three 9s" uptime? Screw "three 9s". IBMs large-scale computers have -- for all intents and purposes -- 100% uptime. This is why banks and financial institutions and governments and militaries rely on such machines -- because when you need it to run all the time and never go down, you get a mainframe. IBM's supercomputers are no different in that respect.

    --
    My blog
  9. Recursion by webrunner · · Score: 5, Funny

    What happens when they put it on the Internet, and then has to also serve itself?

    --
    ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT